BOSTON — Jerry Keefe stood motionless and stared blankly up at the TD Garden jumbotron.
Northeastern’s head coach is normally quick to show emotion following an opposing team’s score. But after a defensive breakdown left junior Lukas Gustafsson wide-open to put Boston College up 4-1 just 35 seconds into the second period, Keefe and the Huskies were out of answers.
“Going into the second period, you’re still in that game,” Keefe lamented postgame. “You get the next one and you’re still in the game.”
After Gustafsson’s goal, BC went on to score once more later in the second period, and three more in the third period. The Huskies have seemingly found magic every time they have stepped on the TD Garden ice over the past seven years, but no late-game comebacks or dramatic upsets were forthcoming this time.
Instead, the matchup played out much as the entire year has — a tale of two teams with different levels of talent, whose seasons are headed in opposite directions.
No. 1 Boston College stomped all over Northeastern in a 8-2 victory in the Beanpot Semifinal, with each of the Eagles’ eight goals coming from different players. The loss snapped Northeastern’s streak of six straight Beanpot finals appearances, and the Huskies will instead settle for a consolation matchup next Monday against Harvard, who were swarmed 7-1 by Boston University in the first semifinal.
“BC has a heck of a team. They played really well tonight, we didn’t, and they deserve to move on,” Keefe said. “We obviously didn’t deserve to move on.”
Though Northeastern has found another gear on the Beanpot stage in recent years, the Huskies team that showed up on Monday was the same group which has disappointed repeatedly this season. After appearing to be headed in the right direction with four wins in five games to begin January, Monday’s loss was the Huskies third straight, dropping their record to 9-13-3 — the program’s worst total through 25 games in nine years.
During each of BC’s seven-consecutive wins prior to Monday, they had scored within the game’s first eight minutes. Headed into the Beanpot, Keefe emphasized the importance of getting off to a fast start, having scored three goals in the first period en route to a 4-2 win over BC when the teams met at Matthews Arena on Nov. 23.
Instead, on the Eagles’ first rush into their attacking end just 46 seconds into the game, freshman Teddy Stiga waltzed into the high slot and beat Northeastern goalie Cameron Whitehead top-corner.
Though it is hard to blame Whitehead for many of the Eagles goals he let up, he appeared to have a clear line of vision to Stiga’s shot. Whitehead finished with 22 saves on 30 shots, dropping his save percentage on the season from .915 down to .908.
Stiga’s goal put the Eagles in the driver’s seat and sprung to life their enormous student section, which stretched almost halfway across the TD Garden balcony.
“We know we’re playing a tough opponent, the defending champs, so to get off to that quick start from Teddy’s score was really important for us,” said BC coach Greg Brown. “That set a really good tone.”
After BC doubled their lead 14 minutes into the first frame, the Huskies responded just 30 seconds later with a blue line shot by junior Jackson Dorrington that was tipped in by freshman Ben Poitras for his first NCAA goal.
The score re-energized Northeastern’s large student contingent on the opposite end of the upper bowl, but it was the last time the Huskies faithful would have reason to cheer all night.
Boston College’s dynamic forwards were mostly stymied on breakouts and slowed down in transition early on in the first period, but they began to break down the Huskies as the game wore on. Though the final shot count was just 31-30 BC, the quality of looks and time of possession skewed in the Eagles favor, especially in the second half of the game.
In the postgame press conference following Northeastern’s win in November, Brown said the Huskies had given BC the most trouble breaking out pucks of any team they faced all season. That was a point of emphasis for the Eagles on Monday, and their sharp passing and backchecking prevented the Huskies from sustaining offensive zone pressure as they had in their previous victory.
“We were quicker to get back to the pucks, and there was better support. I thought we did a lot better getting guys in close support,” said Brown. “They did bottle us up very well that night [in the Northeastern win]. They did a few times tonight, but not nearly as many. We were much crisper.”
Perhaps even more painful for Northeastern is that among Boston College’s eight goal scorers, four entered Monday having scored one goal or fewer on the season. It was not until sophomore Ryan Leonard and freshman James Hagens each punched in a goal in garbage time that the Eagles’ big guns appeared on the scoresheet.
Those last two goals scored by the Eagles in the closing minutes of regulation pushed the game to a complete rout, with the eight goals being the most Northeastern has allowed in a game since an 8-4 loss to Harvard on Jan. 1, 2023.
The win secured the Eagles’ first trip to the Beanpot final since 2019, where they will look to snap a nine-year Beanpot title drought that is the longest among any of the four schools. It also is a reminder that as good as BC’s program has been over the past decade, Northeastern’s overwhelming success in this tournament has kept everyone else down.
“They won five of the last six, so obviously, they are a really good Beanpot team and good team in general,” Stiga said. “So being able to get the win and move on to the finals for the first time in a while, I think the older guys who have been around have been preaching it. It’s hard to do.”
Above all else, Monday was a sobering reminder of just how far away this year’s Northeastern’s team is from Boston College, the presumptive favorites to win the national title. And with nine games remaining in a season that has been relegated to playing for pride, Keefe knows the Huskies main task now is to maintain their focus against a challenging schedule to close the year.
“I’m not sure that we’re going to learn a whole lot from tonight,” said Keefe. “But we’re going to have to pick ourselves up and get ready for Monday against Harvard, because they’ve got a lot of skill as well. So we’ve got to learn from it. Move on and get ready for the next game.”
Northeastern will return to action on Monday at 4:30 p.m. in the Beanpot third place game against Harvard. Matty Wasserman and Daisy Roberts will have the call on WRBB 104.9FM.