This wasn’t the Matthews Arena encore Greg Cronin was looking for.
Ten days previous in a 1-1 tie against national powerhouse Boston College, there were 5,402 fans. Constant battles for the puck. Rough, physical play that held the Eagles in check through overtime.
Last night, Cronin was a drained, bewildered coach following a 5-3 loss to No. 6 Vermont that was far worse than the score indicated. After all, the Catamounts scored their only five in the first 13:38 of the first period, driving NU goalie Adam Geragosian to the bench and backup Doug Jewer onto the ice.
“They killed us,” Cronin said, his team having fallen to 0-4-1 and 0-1-1 in Hockey East play. “You would have thought they were at home the first 10 minutes. They just steamrolled us. We’re so young and we’re so fragile that we react to the score and we get out of our game.”
Vermont walked into Matthews Arena in an historic night for the program as if it was a true veteran of the nationally-renowned conference, scoring in 1:03 off a shot by freshman forward Dean Strong. Then, senior left wing Jeff Corey scored two more goals in the next seven minutes.
The Arena crowd, once a raving, blaring mob, turned silent. So did Cronin.
“It was like, honest to God, one of those Twilight Zone games,” Cronin said. “I turned to [assistant coach] Brendan Walsh and said, ‘What the heck is going on here?’ I turn around and it’s 3-0. I turn around again and it’s 5-0. The bench looked like they were all on Vicodin.”
Acting quickly on the pair scored by Corey, freshman forward Peter Lenes took a turn and scored two more, first at 12:42 and then at 13:38, to finish off the onslaught. Undefeated Vermont (7-0-0, 1-0-0 HE) had staked its claim as a national threat.
“They’ve been waiting for this moment for two years, if you think about it,” Vermont coach Kevin Sneddon said of the HE debut. “Everyone’s saying we haven’t beat anybody good, but we’ve been tested in different ways. I think it means a lot to them but it means a lot more to players past and present.”
On the other side, Cronin was a perplexed man.
“I am obviously a very intense person,” Cronin said, who had exchanged words with referee Scott Zelkin as he walked off the ice following the contest. “I’m not going to go breaking sticks and screaming at people. But if they don’t have enough pride within themselves and realize they’re sabotaging what they’re doing to themselves, then they’ve go to be numb. They’ve got to be emotionally numb, or braindead. Seriously.”
Penalty woes continued for NU. The team amassed 13 whistles over the course of the game, which included two five-minute majors for hitting from behind. For the Huskies, the act is quickly becoming a routine, a scary thought for Cronin.
“This is an undisciplined team,” Cronin said. “I just told them, ‘I’ve coached 82 games in the National Hockey League and I’ve seen us take more penalties in the box already than I’ve seen in 82 games.’ It’s embarrassing to me. They’re not even the hard penalties, the slashing, the tripping, the hooking. I swear to God I’m still kind of numb after this.”
The Huskies were led by freshman first line center Joe Vitale, who scored two of the team’s three goals, including the team’s final goal 13:30 into the final frame. Senior forward Brian Swiniarski, who scored between Vitale’s pair, added to the comeback. Ultimately, any progress or momentum NU hoped to build off was killed by its penalties.
Added to this was Vermont’s intelligent defensive play, outnumbering and overwhelming the Huskies for the majority of the contest.
“We got momentum – there’s eight minutes to go in the game and we scored to make it 5-3,” Cronin said. “We have all kinds of momentum and [defenseman Steve] Birnstill just misses. What do we do? We take a stupid elbowing penalty, then a five-minute major. Then we take another one, a hooking in the offensive zone with two minutes to go.
“We took four straight penalties at one point, and two of them go in the net. It’s just stupid. When you make a decision to slash somebody, or cross-check somebody when you’re killing a penalty, that to me is just selfish. It’s mind-numbing.”
Cronin refused to discuss NU’s offense. When asked how the team responded in the second and third periods, he again referred back to the first.
“We looked pathetic in the first period,” he said. “We skated harder in practice than we did in the first period. It was pathetic. I told them, I was actually nervous because they were nervous. They were standing still with the puck. Then Vermont scored some goofy goals. A guy shoots it from behind the net. Another guy goes up the ice, one of our guys falls down, then it gives them a two-on-one.”
Cronin called a timeout early in the first to try and calm the team down. He asked them a direct question.
“I told them, ‘It’s 3-0,'” he said. “They’ve probably had four scoring chances and three went in. I said, ‘What are you going to do, sit here and mope?'”
On Sunday, NU hosted the U.S. Under-18 team and worked a 1-1 tie. Matti Uusivirta scored for the Huskies while Patrick Kane shocked the Huskies with the Under 18’s lone goal 1:20 into the first.
Saturday, the Huskies also faced off against RPI and held a 4-0 lead after the first period, led by two scores from sophomore forward Jimmy Russo. RPI drove back with five of their own in the second, before finishing off the Huskies with a 7-5 win.
