Last weekend, the men’s hockey team became one of the highest profile college hockey teams in the country.
With a 4-0 shutout over Providence and a 4-3 slugfest win over then top-ranked Boston College, Northeastern thrust itself into the national polls.
The team is ranked No. 11 in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll and No. 14 in the USCHO.com/CBS College Sports national poll.
The Huskies’ success is largely due to the performance of goalie Brad Thiessen. With a 73-save weekend, including the shutout on the road, Thiessen earned this week’s Huntington News Player of the Week honors.
Thiessen is a junior journalism major from Aldergrove, British Columbia, Canada. Before attending Northeastern, he played in the British Columbia Hockey League for Merritt Centennials and the Prince George Spruce Kings. While with Merritt, he played with current teammate and sophomore forward Wade MacLeod.
Northeastern was only one of four schools Thiessen considered, he said. The others were North Dakota, Cornell and Clarkson. A major reason he chose Northeastern was the ability to get a good education while playing high-level hockey, he said. Thiessen was offered an opportunity to start immediately and took it.
“[I came here for] the opportunity to play hockey and major in journalism. I always liked following sports, watching sports, listening to sports radio and reading the sports section in newspapers,” Thiessen said. “So that was something I always wanted to be able to continue on with. If I wasn’t going to be able to play hockey, I wanted to do something with sports and journalism was kind of the best avenue I thought for me.”
In his first two seasons as the Husky netminder, Thiessen racked up records and accolades. Currently he is top 10 in every major goaltender statistic kept by Northeastern. He is the all-time leader in goals against average, with 2.48, and save percentage, with .917. He is tied for the school record for career shutouts, with seven, a mark also held by Keni Gibson, who reached his seventh shutout in the 2004-05 season.
Thiessen said he has high hopes for himself and the Huskies. After two disappointing results at the Beanpot, including scoring on himself in his first in 2007, Thiessen said he hopes his team will reach the Frozen Four.
“I want to win,” he said. “We haven’t won anything yet, of significance really. We’ve had some high rankings and stuff, which brought some attention to the program. But we haven’t won the Beanpot or Hockey East championship, to get to the [NCAA] tournament. The Frozen Four is something that I think is the next step for the school. I think we have the ability to do it right now.”
– Nathan Vaughan,
News Staff
