By: Josh Brown
WATERTOWN, Mass- For Bentley, Saturday night’s game against Northeastern meant a little more than just your average home game.
The Falcons, for the first time, hosted a Hockey East school at the John A. Ryan Skating Arena and did so victoriously, beating the Huskies 4-1 to complete the weekend sweep.
Once again Jayson Argue stole the show for Bentley (2-2), stopping 40 of the 41 shots he faced on the night, just a day after turning in an impressive 49-save effort in a 3-2 win on Friday. Derick Roy made 17 stops on the night for Northeastern (1-2).
“Obviously pretty proud of our guys to come out and play the style that they played for 60-minutes,” said Bentley coach Ryan Soderquist. “Actually, last night I was pretty embarrassed of our team’s effort last night. Stole one last night, our goalie stole one last night, but all-in-all I thought our goalie played extremely well again tonight, but I also thought our boys played 60-minutes of hockey and I thought we earned that victory.”
Undisciplined play continued to haunt the Huskies, with the team taking seven penalties for a total of 9:38 on the penalty kill.
“Every time we started to get some things going we got a penalty,” said Northeastern coach Jim Madigan, “or we just fought it at the net again. We had some really good chances. We didn’t finish at the net again tonight, then we got frustrated again and that showed with our lack of discipline.”
“And it’s our older players, they’ve got to play smarter. We rely on them to play and help us win, not be in the penalty box, and we got to learn from it.”
Much like Friday night, the Huskies controlled the shot margin in the opening frame, this time by a 16-7 margin, but it was Bentley who was able to get pucks in the net, the first of which came via Mike Berry just 1:13 into the game.
Setting up in the offensive zone, Berry unleashed a rocket that hit the top of Roy’s glove and bounced into the back of the net.
Just over five minutes later Will Suter extended the lead to two.
Fighting for position in the slot, Suter was able to get a piece of Matt Blomquist’s shot from just inside the blue line and redirect it by Roy.
Meanwhile, Argue continued to be the glue that held the Falcons together all series long. At times being peppered with shots by Huskies desperate to spark-plug the team and get the offense rolling, the sophomore was perfect in the period, stopping all 16 shots he faced.
“I thought their goalie obviously played well,” said Huskies coach Jim Madigan, “so give the goalie credit. And we didn’t elevate pucks enough. Their goalie is down and he covers the bottom-half very well and we just couldn’t get it up.”
Midway through the second period, on a five-on-three man-advantage, the Falcons upped the margin to three.
Cycling the puck in the offensive zone, Blomquist found Andrew Gladiuk, who had a hat-trick in Friday night’s win, who then proceeded to fire a wrister from the right face-off circle that snuck under the arm of Roy.
Early in the third period, Bentley was able to net a fourth goal, signaling the end of the night from Roy, who was immediately replaced with freshman Ryan Ruck.
Collecting a puck in the Northeastern zone, sophomore Kyle Schmidt danced into the slot and fired a shot that caught Roy cheating to make it 4-0.
The Huskies would get one back mid-way through the third when Nolan Stevens took a pass and immediately fired it over the shoulder of Argue, but that would be all they could muster up.
“Obvious we were extremely happy with Northeastern coming here,” said Soderquist. “I have a great respect for their program to give us the opportunity to come here and play. We’re a growing program and it’s going to take people like Jim Madigan, who have class for the game and want the game to grow to come into a building like ours, it does a tremendous amount for our program.”