The news that the Northeastern men’s hockey team, winless in all eight of its games this year, lost to No. 4 Maine, 5-2, Friday night didn’t shock too many around the college hockey nation.
The fact that the team was down by just one goal with two minutes to play, however, might have raised a few eyebrows.
“I’m excited. I don’t think anyone thinks we have any chance to win, except the 20 guys in our locker room and this coaching staff,” said NU coach Bruce Crowder before the team traveled to face the Black Bears, who jumped to third in www.uscho.com national poll after the weekend.
Despite the loss, which furthers the school mark for futility to open a season, going 0-6-2, Crowder was pleased with his team’s performance.
“I was probably more frustrated early in the season, when we had some other games that we played well, but didn’t get the goaltending and the score we needed,” he said. “For us to go up and play Maine and be down 3-2 with two minutes and 26 seconds to go in the game and having some pretty good opportunities, it was really positive.
“You could tie yourself up in knots, but I’ve liked a lot of things about this team,” he added. “I know some of the kids offensively are holding the stick a bit tighter than they should but we’ll just continue to work on that. Off our video, which we break down, we put 39 pretty good chances at the Maine net. If we were only getting 19 chances, then that’s a different story. I think our team speed is deceptive and I think it’s improved a lot. We’re getting better, that’s the bottom line.”
NU entered the third period down a goal after Maine’s Luciano Aquino took a second-period pass from Colin Shields and powered it past NU goaltender Keni Gibson (27 saves).
In the third period, Maine widened the lead when Shields notched his second assist of the game, this time on a Tom Zabkowicz score four minutes into the final frame.
Northeastern didn’t go down without a fight, though, as Jason Guerriero brought the Huskies back to within a tally with his third goal of the year just three minutes later. Sophomore Mike Morris took a pass in the corner on the power play and fired an airborne pass to Guerriero, who sent the puck past Black Bear netminder Jimmy Howard (19 saves).
Gibson, who had struggled early in the year, put in his second consecutive quality performance.
“I thought Keni played great,” Crowder said. “I have no qualms. The first two goals they scored kind of had eyes on them – one was a deflection. Those are the type of breaks you get when you have some momentum for you and obviously Maine is pretty tough to play at home.
“You don’t need to be a hockey genius to figure out that you need some stability in goal,” Crowder added. “I think Keni has given us that the last couple of games.”
Aquino potted his second goal of the contest at the 13:35 mark, but NU senior assistant captain Brian Tudrick scored a shorthanded three minutes later to bring the visitors within a goal once again.
“The attitude has been fantastic,” Crowder said of his team’s refusal to throw in the towel. “We’ve tried to have the guys realize that what’s important here is what’s going on in the locker room and the weight room. We’ve told them in a lot of ways, ‘Don’t worry about things you don’t have control over.’ The practices have been good. Nobody is going south on this thing. I’ve said it before; I like this team. We’ve had a few tough sandwiches to swallow, but there are a lot of good, positive things that you see and we’re going to get better.”
Mike Ludin scored on the power play with just over two minutes to play and Maine senior Todd Jackson capped the scoring with an empty net tally at 19:59 of the final frame.
There are no hard feelings about the empty net goal with just a tick left on the clock, according to Crowder.
“Kids want to score,” he said. “If it was my kid, I would want him to score. I would probably be more pissed off if the kid shot it into the corner. I think I would take that more as a spite than anything. These kids want to score, and the kid had an opportunity to score on the empty net. There’s not a guy in my locker room that wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
This weekend, NU plays a home-and-home series with New Hampshire, a team that hasn’t won at Northeastern’s St. Boltoph Street grounds in their last six attempts.
“I hope the Matthews ghosts keep it coming,” Crowder said. “They’re a great hockey team. They’ve got depth, they’ve got an All-American goaltender in the net for them and a defenseman [Brian Yandle] that has eight goals already this year.”
Friday’s home game (on CN8) starts at 7:30 p.m., while Saturday’s contest in Durham, N.H. (on NHPTV) will begin at 7 p.m.
