By Jonathan Raymond
The men’s hockey team returned to the ice in fine fashion Saturday night with a 5-1 victory over Prince Edward Isle in its exhibition opener.
The Huskies looked shaky through the first five minutes, allowing a flurry of early shots, but quickly shook off the cobwebs and cruised for the rest of the night.
The team struck first, scoring seven minutes into the first period when freshman forward Tyler McNeely netted on a pass from junior captain Joe Vitale. Vitale then scored the second tally at the start of the second period, as the Huskies proceeded to score three more unanswered goals from there before PEI eventually scored midway through the third.
McNeely’s debut was memorable, as he finished the night with two goals and an assist. The performance gave fans a taste of the scoring prowess he displayed as the fifth leading scorer in the British Columbia Hockey League last season, which they hope to see from him often this year.
“It’s nice, it takes the monkey off the back, takes some of the pressure off,” McNeely said. “Right now, I’m just ready to get the season started.”
The match also marked the debut for the rest of this year’s promising freshman class, as defensemen Dan Nycholat, Mike Hewkin and Drew Muench and forwards Steve Silva and Wade MacLeod all logged significant minutes for head coach Greg Cronin. MacLeod and Hewkin both had two assists in the game.
“I really was pleased with the freshmen,” Cronin said. “Defensively I thought Nycholat, Muench and Hewkin all played well, all moved the puck well. And clearly MacLeod and McNeely and Vitale was a terrific line.”
The McNeely-Vitale-MacLeod line accounted for the game’s first two goals. The team will look for the line to gel and continue more of that kind of production as the regular season begins.
“They’re filling their roles right away, not nervous, not suspicious about their play at all,” said Vitale of his freshman linemates. “It’s just like playing with two seniors out there. They’re great hockey players and they’re fun to play with.”
Also important was the play of sophomore goaltender Brad Thiessen. Much of the team’s hopes this season rest on the young netminder, who holds the Northeastern single-season record with a .921 save percentage and 2.48 goals against average last season. He displayed no off-season rust against PEI, stopping 29 shots while allowing just one.
Thiessen also had to deal with many power play situations, as the Huskies and PEI shoved back and fourth throughout the game. The teams combined for 30 penalties and became involved in multiple small tussles throughout the game.
Bad blood aside, the exhibition gave Cronin an opportunity to see his squad involved in live on-ice action for the first time, and to assess where the team is.
“The big thing is, you try to work on identity as a team and you come out of a week’s worth of training camp and there’s no live ammunition, so you get semi-live ammunition against a Canadian team with officials and penalties,” he said. “You can work on your special teams and figure out who has chemistry on your lines.”
Cronin also said he was satisfied with many things the team did, including the performance of the special teams.
“The power play was good,” he said. “I thought the Costa-Guzior-McCauley line did a good job most of the night as well, so we found two lines that seemed to have some chemistry.”
The Huskies will now look to prepare for the start of their regular season. The team will start with five straight home matches, four of which come against teams ranked nationally in the top 12, and could provide an early indicator of where the team is headed this season.
Cronin said he views the opening stretch as a valuable opportunity to see how such a young team will respond to a tough schedule.
“There’ll be the first couple of weeks here where we have six freshmen, six of the 18 skaters are freshmen,” he said. “That’ll be really interesting to see how they respond.”
Next weekend, the team will face Hockey East conference opponent Providence Friday and the No. 1 North Dakota Fighting Sioux, who beat defending champion Michigan State 6-0 this weekend, Saturday. Both matches will be at Matthews Arena at 7 p.m.
