The No. 12 Northeastern women’s hockey (6-2, 3-0 HE ) swept its cross-town rivals, the Boston University Terriers (1-7, 1-2 HE), Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, ending 3-1 and 7-3, respectively. The games were chippy with 18 total penalties, including one major, and the Huskies took five of their 10 goals from the power play.
Northeastern also had a massive offensive presence. The Huskies have not scored seven goals in a game since Feb. 28, 2021, against the University of New Hampshire.
Head coach Dave Flint has been dividing doubleheaders between goaltenders freshman Renna Trembecky and sophomore Lisa Jönsson. But for the weekend against BU, he left the net to Jönsson, who racked up 47 saves across the two games.
On Friday evening, BU’s senior forward Clara Yuhn opened up the game with a clean shot to the back of the net unassisted. Northeastern was firing away for the remainder of the period, but close shots by freshman forward Stryker Zablocki and sophomore forward Éloïse Caron did not land.
Ten minutes into the second period, Northeastern found relief after Caron went on a breakaway and made a clean shot to the back of BU graduate student Michelle Pasiechnyk’s net. She slammed against the wall, the score finally leveled. The goal made her Northeastern’s leading scorer this season with five goals.
The Huskies dominated shots during the first two periods, 28-12, but failed to take the lead until the last minute of the game.
With 28 seconds to go in the final period, junior forward Allie Lalonde tapped the puck in off an assist from senior defender Kristina Allard, putting Northeastern in the lead for a 2-1 game. Allard is new to the power play group, which was on fire all weekend.
“The play [Allard] made to look for a stick coming through the middle was seasoned veteran play as far as I’m concerned. And we talk to Allie [Lalonde] all the time: go to the net, go to the net. You’re so skilled, and she went to the net and she got rewarded,” associate coach Nick Carpenito said.
Twenty seconds later, with 10 seconds to go in the game, Zablocki found the net off an assist from Shannon, who holds the No. 2 assist average in the NCAA at 1.33. The game clock buzzed at a 3-1 scoreboard.
The next day, the crowd at Matthews was the largest it’s been all season, and the Huskies, despite a more even game shots-on-goal wise, just kept hitting the back of the net.
Five minutes in, graduate student forward Jaden Bogden took a shot from the crease off an assist from Caron on the power play. The two had not played on the same line since last season.
With a minute to go, Caron swooped in again to make it 2-0, maneuvering past a BU defender before making a neat shot from nearly behind the net. By the end of the first period, the teams were tied with nine shots on goal. They had evenly exchanged four penalties, although only Northeastern had been able to capitalize.
With Northeastern on the power play 10 minutes into the second period, senior defender Jules Constantinople fired a signature rocket to the net, where Shannon tapped it in for her fourth goal of the season.
Northeastern made the most of its power play just 30 seconds later when Allard made a shot from the crease off another assist from Constantinople to make the score 4-0.
Midway through the second period, BU got back some of its momentum. On a one-on-one breakaway, senior forward Sydney Healey notched the Terriers’ first goal of the afternoon for a 4-1 scoreboard.
In a tense moment just three minutes later, Jönsson fended off several shots before BU’s junior forward Greta Henderson found the net, closing in on the deficit. With just a period to go, the Terriers finally found their footing.
Flint had a message for the team during intermission. “I said ‘Hey, you took your foot off the gas, you thought the game was over at 4-0, and you let them back in. We’ve got 20 minutes to take the game back.’ I knew they were going to come on flying at us and we just needed to be ready for that.”
While the teams exchanged shots at the start of the third period, a five minute hitting from behind penalty for captain and senior defender Maeve Carey made it Northeastern’s game once again.
Shannon started off the power play by tapping in a near-identical rocket to the crease by Constantinople. A minute later, Bogden scored her second goal of the afternoon from the left of the net off an assist from Lalonde.
“When you have five [minutes], you can really slow it down, take your time and you really don’t want to force anything, and I think that’s kind of what we were trying to do our best, and it worked out for us,” Bogden said of the power play.
The now 6-2 game seemed in the bag for the Huskies, but perhaps it was the rivalry that kept the Terriers in the running. Yuhn found the net once again with two minutes to go, but it was sophomore forward Morgan Jackson who got the last of the night off an empty net goal with just 20 seconds left. The game ended 7-3, an incredible showing for the Huskies as they wade into more conference play.
“Any chance you get to play against your rival, and then you beat them in both games, is a pleasure, so definitely excited to see what else happens throughout the conference,” Bogden said.
As for what lies ahead, Flint thinks the defense needs to tighten up.
This was also the first weekend without sophomore defender Tuva Kandell, who recently announced she was returning to Sweden to play on a professional team.
“We have stretches where we’re really good, and we’re taking away time and space, and then we have stretches where we’re sitting back and we’re not really defending hard,” Flint said. “We’re defending the rushing consistently. So we just need consistency there. That’s probably the biggest thing we need.”
Northeastern will be back in Matthews Arena to play the University of Vermont Catamounts (4-4-2, 1-0-1 HE) Nov. 7 and 8.
