By Jonathan Raymond
For the Huskies, it was one of those weekends where what could’ve just as easily been a two-win success turned out being a two-loss disappointment.
The team battled No. 13 Maine twice at Matthews, losing Friday night by a score of 3-2 and then again Saturday 4-3. The losses dropped the Huskies to 1-3, and saw them fall from a tie at first place in Hockey East to a tie for fourth.
Head coach Greg Cronin stressed the need for team cohesiveness after their performances over the weekend.
“We got to get back to basics. We’re not working efficiently. We’re working, but it’s scattered and it’s not together,” he said. “It’s just individual and it’s a sporadic game we’re playing right now. We got to tighten it up defensively and we got to do a better job of playing with an identity because we don’t have one right now. We’re just sloppy.”
In the first game of the weekend the Huskies took the lead twice. Seven minutes into the game, junior forward Dennis McCauley beat Maine goaltender Ben Bishop on a shot to the top corner of the net to give the team a 1-0 lead. They took the lead again when sophomore forward Greg Costa made good on a power-play just 18 seconds into the second period to make it 2-1.
Maine, however, had an answer for both goals, and when the Black Bears scored, just as a power-play ran out of time in the third period, the Huskies couldn’t respond, despite two late power-play opportunities. One resulted in a six-on-four situation for the last 45 seconds and allowed for many scoring opportunities they couldn’t capitalize on.
The team took the first loss hard and felt they could have played better, said junior captain Joe Vitale.
“We’re tired of telling ourselves we’re going to work hard, we’re getting chances, we’re getting screwed by the refs. We’re just tired of making excuses,” he said. “Everybody’s pretty upset about that loss right there. We deserved a better fate I think. We came out really slow, we didn’t protect the lead, we did a lot of things wrong that game. We’re a little bitter about that.”
The game Saturday night played out in a much different fashion, with the teams playing relatively evenly in a scoreless first period.
The second period proved to be Northeastern’s undoing, as Maine scored three times, once shorthanded. An early goal in the third period made it 4-1, which was enough to hold off NU’s late comeback attempt, where the Huskies scored twice to set up another tense, though unsuccessful, last grasp at sending the game to overtime.
Cronin said he was upset with the discipline shown on defense during much of the second game.
“We had players standing right around the guy that scored the goal. There was undisciplined effort around the puck,” he said. “There were chances on both ends, clearly an evenly played game. But if you watch our chances, they came from our guy having to get away from a Maine guy, where their guys, there was nobody around them.”
One positive from Saturday night’s game was the emergence of the promising Wade MacLeod-Joe Vitale-Tyler McNeely line. The two freshmen forwards and Vitale, with whom much of the scoring hopes had been placed before the season, had yet to score this season before busting out two goals as a line Saturday.
For McNeely, it was his first career collegiate goal.
“It feels good to get the monkey off my back after a couple games,” he said. “Before this we were working hard and doing the right things, we just couldn’t put the puck into the net. It’s nice to see Wade get his two assists and Joe get those points too, and our whole line just start getting the bounces.”
The team looks to turn things around next weekend with a home-and-home series against No. 7 New Hampshire, who swept No. 4 Colorado College during the weekend and could figure into the discussion for No. 1 team in the country this week. The two teams will square off at Matthews Friday at 7 p.m. before heading to New Hampshire to complete the weekend.
