By Jonathan Raymond
The men’s hockey team opened its regular season play this weekend with its customary toughness and physicality. The Huskies played two hard-fought games, winning an overtime thriller against Providence 3-2 and then falling to No. 1 North Dakota 3-0 in a struggle the following night.
The Friday night tilt against Providence, the team’s regular season opener, was a back-and-forth contest. The Huskies tied the game at two late in the third period when sophomore forward Chad Costello hit freshman defenseman Drew Muench with a pass, who then forwarded it on to junior forward Ryan Ginand. Ginand sent the puck home for his second goal of the game, forcing the teams to head to overtime.
The Huskies didn’t wait long in the overtime period to end the contest, as sophomore forward Chris Donovan made good on a breakaway opportunity after just 44 seconds. He hit the top corner of the net, giving Northeastern the victory and sending the Dog House into a frenzy.
“I wanted to just drive wide,” Donovan said of the play. “I got a great pass from Costello, and I didn’t want to butcher another breakaway, so I just saw the corner, and took a shot, and it went in.”
Head coach Greg Cronin said he was pleased with the way his team came together as the match progressed.
“The good thing is I thought we got better as the game went on,” Cronin said. “The first 10 minutes of the game, [Providence] looked terrific, they looked like a veteran team. We looked like a real tentative, fragile team, and then we started to get into the rhythm and flow of the game.”
Players said they thought getting the first win at home against a conference opponent was important, and helped build momentum for the regular season.
“I’m happy about the team’s victory. It was a big, big first game and we needed to pull that off,” Ginand said. “It’s huge. We want to look for home ice advantage when we go for the playoffs, so it’s a big victory. We need to keep on going from here.”
The Huskies followed Friday’s game with an impressive performance in their 3-0 loss to North Dakota Saturday night. The final score didn’t illustrate the closeness of the game, and Northeastern played evenly with the Fighting Sioux the whole game. The Huskies kept the score 1-0 until 10 minutes into the third, when UND managed to find the net twice in a span of 50 seconds.
“I was really feeling good about the whole thing up until the two goals,” Cronin said. “It was a good game to watch. I’m disappointed that we didn’t score. The Dog House was there while the Red Sox were playing. It was great to have the fans there. I think if we had scored a goal, it would’ve been a totally different environment.”
The effort against North Dakota illustrated the power-play problems the Huskies suffered in pre-season play that also plagued them throughout last year. The team was just 1-8 on power-play opportunities against Providence, and 0-7 against UND.
“Our power play has got to score,” Cronin said. “We had a number of power plays, I think at one point it was four or five to two, and we got nothing out of it.”
Cronin also stressed the importance of taking shots and creating scoring opportunities.
“We couldn’t score. Goals and hits generate excitement, and we got a couple nice hits, but we didn’t get any goals,” he said. “And we didn’t shoot the puck. You have a ton of chances and you don’t score, so the goalie looks good, and you start trying to find the perfect play. We had three-on-one’s and two-on-one’s where guys didn’t shoot. They’d stick the puck into the corner or miss their passes.”
Still, Cronin was generally pleased with the way the team fared against a tough opponent like UND.
“Yeah, they’re the No. 1 overall ranked team in the country, they had a good hockey team,” Cronin said. “But I was really proud of the way we played. I thought we actually controlled the play for most of the game. We just have to build on it as a group.”
The players, too, felt they gave North Dakota quite a run, and they could build off that during the rest of the season.
“We carried it to them for large parts of that game,” said sophomore goaltender Brad Thiessen, who tallied 21 saves. “They got the first goal and we didn’t back down. We kept coming at them and at them.”
The Huskies look to an important pair of Colonial Athletic Association matches this weekend at home against Maine, who completed a sweep over Mercyhurst this weekend. The weekend series could be an important opportunity for Northeastern to establish solid ground in the Hockey East standings. Those games will be Friday and Saturday at Matthews Arena, both at 7 p.m.
