By Sam Dykstra/DFP Staff
It’ll be déjà vu all over again next weekend.
In its last game of the regular season, the No. 13 Boston University men’s hockey fell to Northeastern University 4-3 in the last regular season game of the year, setting up another matchup between the two sides in a week as the No. 3 and 6 seeds in the Hockey East quarterfinals.
The first period picked up where the third period of Friday’s game at Matthews Arena left off: with plenty of penalties. The two teams totaled 23 penalty minutes in the frame, including a five-minute major for elbowing and game misconduct on freshman blue-liner Garrett Noonan with one minute left in the period.
But it was the Terriers who took the greatest advantage of all the whistles, scoring on two of their four power plays in the second frame. Max Nicastro (slapper from the left circle 4:08 into the period) and Chris Connolly (wrister that went five-hole through traffic at 17:13) were both the benefactors of Charlie Coyle assists to notch those two goals with the man up. Those scores sandwiched a Randy Guzior tip-goal to give BU a 2-1 lead after one.
The Huskies knotted the game back up at two apiece with 1:10 left in the second period when defenseman Drew Daniels took a feed from his twin brother Justin and slid the puck past a sprawling Kieran Millan.
Mike Hewkin gave the Huskies their first lead of the game in the third when his snap shot from the high slot deflected off a BU defender and over the glove of Millan, who couldn’t react to the deflection quite quickly enough. One minute and one second later, Steve Silva extended that lead to two goals with another shot that sailed over a butterflied Millan.
The Terriers inched back to close the NU lead to one when junior forward Kevin Gilroy got just enough of a loose puck in the slot to tap it through the wickets of Huskies goalie Clay Witt with 2:50 left in the final frame.
One of the worst weekends of refereeing we’ve witnessed in a long time; there were lots of phantom calls. especially Friday night at NU. The refs seem to do their best to interrupt the flow of the game both nights. At times it seemed as if they might be getting paid by the penalty.
That being said, NU clearly played with more heart and energy than BU Saturday night, which was surpirsing because the Terriers had the chance to move into to second with a victory while NU was locked into sixth.
Losing Noonan early really hurt, especially with Warsofsky sidelined. It is unclear whether he actually deserved the five minutes and an ejection. Still, BU showed little restraint, taking nunerous relatiatory penalties throughout the weekend.
If the team hopes to do any damage in the playoffs, they’re going to have to play with more urgency and discipline. If the Terriers had a few more closers, they might have a little more margin for error, but truth of the matter is goals do not come easily to this sextet, so their success or failure will depend to a large degree on bringing a ferocious work ethic to the rink and avoiding mental and physcial errors.