As it turns out, the rumor that the world would explode into a million tiny particles if the current Northeastern men’s hockey team actually won a game, is untrue.
At least for now.
Northeastern, unimpeded by the loads of snow dumped on Boston over the weekend, downed visiting Vermont Saturday night, 1-0, for their first victory of the 2003 campaign. The matchup, which ended NU’s longest winless streak to start the season in the history of the program, featured the only other winless Division I program in the nation.
“I think I saw Curious George jump off my back and go running,” said NU goaltender Keni Gibson after his second career shutout. “It felt pretty good; I lost about 10 pounds off the shoulders.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later,” Gibson added. “The guys played great in front of me.”
Eighth-year Northeastern coach Bruce Crowder wasn’t sad to see the streak go, either.
“It was a long time coming and obviously I feel for [Vermont coach] Kevin Sneddon,” said Crowder. “Something had to give with these two teams and I’m glad it ended up giving on our side.
“We can’t really get caught up in what’s happening in the press or what people are saying,” Crowder added later. “We’ve just got to stay focused and keep ourselves going in the right direction. For the most part, we’ve done that over the last six games. My only real disappointment, except for the losses, was the way we played last Saturday night against [Boston College] in the third period. I wasn’t impressed, but all the other games we’ve played extremely well and we kept coming and played hard. We just weren’t getting any rewards for our effort.”
Despite the unsuccessful swing to open the year, Gibson knew his team would get what it deserved at some point.
“The atmosphere around school and you hear things that you try to block out,” he said. “There’s a lot of people still backing us, like the Dog House there every night no matter what. People ask you why you haven’t won yet, and it’s not like we aren’t working as hard as we possibly can. We knew with our hard work we were going to turn it around. You just can’t work this hard and not do well.”
Northeastern freshman Ray Ortiz scored the games only goal, and the first of his collegiate career at the 13:46 mark of the first period. Ortiz took a pass in the Catamount crease from fellow freshman Yale Lewis, who was stationed at the right faceoff circle. Ortiz, the current Hockey East Rookie of the Week, took little time to tap in the only goal NU needed to erase its skid.
“I think the nice surprise this year has been Yale Lewis,” Crowder said of Northeastern’s top freshman scorer with five points. “He’s kind of a throwback to the Lake State teams in the late ’80s. He’s very good in the corners, he’s a big body, he doesn’t throw the puck away and he makes good plays. He made a nice play to get the puck over to Ray for the tap-in goal.”
Northeastern goaltender Keni Gibson turned away 25 shots for his first shutout since Jan. 6, 2002, when he blanked host Boston University in a 3-0 decision.
Five minutes into the second period, Gibson held off a trio of shots from inside his own crease.
“The guy was cutting across the front of the net and I just followed him right across,” Gibson said. “I stopped one with my blocker, one with my pads and then one with my pads right after. When you’re having a day like that, when you can follow the puck no matter how fast it’s going or where it’s going, you know you’re going to have a good day.”
“He’s played extremely well the last few games,” Crowder said of his junior netminder. “We’ve been talking about that lately. It’s something we need him to continue to do. We also need to work on finding some offense. He won one for us tonight, and have to build from that.”
Next Saturday, the Huskies host Princeton at Matthews Arena starting at 7 p.m. Northeastern is 12-3-2 in its last 17 contests with ECAC teams.
