Heading into last weekend, the Northeastern’s men’s hockey team had the opportunity to pick up four crucial Hockey East points, but instead picked up the hockey equivalent of the silver sombrero as they struck out twice against league opponents.
Against preseason conference favorite BU on Friday, the Huskies outplayed the favorite for 40 minutes, but ended up taking the middle 20 off in the 7-6 loss. On the back end of the two-game homestand, NU spotted perennial cellar-dwelling Hockey East foe UMass three goals, a lead that eventually proved to be insurmountable.
Prior to Saturday night’s contest, NU had relinquished the first goal of the match in five of it’s first six games. At the 9:47 mark in the first, Minuteman Matt Anderson took a feed from the corner and continued the dubious trend.
Along with being physically outplayed in the first period, bringing chants of “hit ’em back” from the Dog House, the Huskies lost most, if not all, of their scoring opportunities because of miscues and miscommunication. With three minutes remaining, UMass forward Tim Turner took another feed from the corner and one-timed it past freshman goalie Tim Heneroty.
NU would give the Minutemen one more goal before they hit the score sheet. Just 2:27 into the second period, Massachusetts forward Peter Trovato deflected a shot past Heneroty, giving the visitor’s a 3-0 advantage. All three goals were scored from shots taken within five feet of the hosts’ net.
“Our defensive coverages are breaking down, we’re giving up too many opportunities in areas that we shouldn’t be giving them up. We’ve been looking at that lately, and it’s something we need to get fixed soon,” said NU coach Bruce Crowder.
Although the Huskies were able to mount a comeback with two quick second period goals, they couldn’t dig themselves completely out of the hole, dropping their Hockey East record to 0-2-1.
“It’s certainly a disappointing loss for us, but give Amherst credit,” Crowder said. “They were able to come in here and played extremely hard. Overall, I think it’s a big win for them.”
Saturday night’s hockey game against cross-town rival Boston University was supposed to be a duel of the goalies. It was supposed to be a hard-fought 60 straight minutes. It was not. The score, 7-6 in favor of BU, points to an entirely different scenario.
Both teams came into the contest with trouble finding the net, especially during power play situations. For the season, NU was 1-14 with the man advantage, while in the last three games BU hadn’t posted a power play strike in 19 tries. The teams combined for six power play goals on a night wrought with penalties.
The Terriers didn’t take long to get the proverbial scoring monkey off their back, as sophomore Justin Maiser took a pass from Jekabs Redlihs and buried a shot 17 seconds into the match.
A broken play knotted the score up for the Huskies just eight minutes later. NU defenseman Tim Judy corralled a loose puck just beneath the right face-off circle and fired a shot off the pads of the tumbling Terrier goalie. With netminder Sean Fields badly out of position, sophomore center Jason Guerriero easily knocked the puck into the empty net.
Less than a minute later, the Huskies scored their second power play goal of the game and third on the season, again due to a boarding penalty on Maiser. The first unit of Guerriero, Ryan, and freshman Mike Morris shined, moved the puck well in the offensive zone and finished the sequence with a Mike Ryan one-timer to give NU the lead.
The resident NU fans, including the famed “Dog House,” went ballistic when Scott Selig flew into the BU defensive zone with less than a minute remaining, giving the Huskies a 3-1 lead. Selig, streaking over the line, zipped a slap shot that was blocked by Fields.
However, the puck bounced off Fields and a BU defender and sat in front of the goal with both Terriers out of position. Selig drove hard to the net and poked the puck past the goal line, diving after it in the process amidst screams from the 4,345 fanatics in attendance.
Then the second period started.
The Northeastern team that showed up for the second frame was eerily similar to the collective that was demolished by Wisconsin two weeks ago. In the second 20 minutes, NU gave up five unanswered goals, exchanging their two-goal lead for a three-goal deficit.
“They made us look like a pee-wee team in that second period,” Crowder said.
By the 9:56 mark of the second period the Huntington faithful were completely taken out of the game. They stood silent as BU’s Brian McConnell put a perfect pass on the stick of defenseman Brian Miller, who knocked home the puck and gave the Terriers a 5-3 lead.
“Tonight we came to play two periods of hockey,” Guerriero said. “You can’t take five minutes off against a team like that, let alone a period. They’ll eat you up.”
With 8:28 left, goaltender Keni Gibson cracked the crossbar of the goal with his stick after surrendering BU’s fifth goal of the period.
Boston University coach Jack Parker was pleased with the effort from his team, as well as the push from his competition.
“I thought we played great in the second period and dominated the game. When we have a team up 6-3 we should be able to put them away, but give Northeastern credit, they battled back hard,” said Parker.
Crowder ensured that his team wouldn’t sleep through the third period as well.
“We had a little talk after the second period, and they came out and played hard in the third and battled back, they just didn’t battle far enough back,” Crowder said.
Opening the third period, coach Crowder elected to bench standout goalie Keni Gibson in favor of true freshman Tim Heneroty. Heneroty had yet to see any ice time in his first collegiate season.
“I think Keni was struggling a little bit, and putting pressure on himself. I’m sure he’d like to have some of those goals back, but some of them had eyes on them,” Crowder said. “I hadn’t seen Timmy Heneroty play during the recruiting process, so I just said, ‘You’re playing the third period, I’m looking forward to watching you play.'”
The comeback began when Jared Mudryk picked up a loose puck in front of the net and buried it in the absence of goaltender Sean Fields. Five minutes later a flashing Mike Morris would bring the Huskies within a goal.
But the Huskies hopes were spiked when BU sophomore Justin Maiser buried his second goal of the game, and third of the season at 13:40. Northeastern Captain Mike Ryan attempted to clear the puck the length of the ice while killing a penalty. Unfortunately for Husky fans, the puck never got further than BU defenseman Ryan Whitney’s stick. He corralled the puck and sent it over to BU defender Brian Miller, who fed Maiser in front. After roofing the shot past Heneroty, BU again had a two goal lead, providing all they would need for their 300th all-time Hockey East win.
