BOSTON — Jerry Keefe stood motionless and stared blankly up at the TD Garden jumbotron.
After an opposing team’s score, Northeastern’s head coach is often quick to show emotion. 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 stepped onto TD Garden ice over the past seven years, but no late-game comebacks or dramatic upsets were forthcoming this time.
Instead, the game offered a harsh dose of reality — a matchup of two teams with vastly 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, which was 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 very much resembled same group, with the same issues, that has disappointed repeatedly throughout this season.
The Huskies appeared to be turning the corner with four wins in five games to begin January, but Monday marked Northeastern’s third straight defeat, dropping its record to 9-13-3 — the program’s worst mark through 25 games in nine years.
The Eagles entered Monday on a seven-game winning streak, and they scored within the game’s first eight minutes during each win. At last Monday’s Beanpot Media Day, Keefe emphasized the importance of getting off to a strong start — a point underpinned by the Huskies scoring three first-period goals when they topped BC 4-2 at Matthews Arena back 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 Whitehead is not at directly fault for many of the Eagles’ eight goals — some of which they just walked into wide-open one timers or odd-man rushes — he did appear to have a clear line of vision to Stiga’s shot from distance, and was late to react with his glove.
“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.”
BC doubled their lead 14 minutes into the first frame on a rebound score by senior Connor Joyce, further riling up the Eagles’ enormous student section which stretched almost halfway across the TD Garden balcony.
Then, Northeastern responded within 30 seconds on a blue line shot by junior Jackson Dorrington that was tipped by freshman Ben Poitras for his first NCAA goal.
Poitras’ score re-energized Northeastern’s huge student contingent on the opposite end of the upper bowl, but it was just about the last positive moment for the Huskies all night.
Northeastern mostly kept BC’s dynamic forwards to the perimeter throughout the first period, but the Eagles began to break down the Huskies’ neutral zone traps as the game wore on. The final shot count was just 31-30 BC, but the quality of looks and time of possession heavily skewed in BC’s 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 did not hold true on Monday, where the Eagles were sharp with their passing and repeatedly turned loose pucks in the neutral zone into possession and scoring opportunities.
“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 most painful for Northeastern is that among BC’s eight goal scorers, four entered Monday having scored one goal or fewer on the season. It wasn’t until sophomore Ryan Leonard and freshman James Hagens each punched in a goal in garbage time that the Eagles’ big guns even appeared on the scoresheet.
Those last two goals in the closing minutes of regulation pushed the game to a complete rout, with the eight goals marking the most Northeastern has surrendered 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. That statistic also serves as a good reminder that for 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 national title favorites. And with nine games remaining in a season that no longer carries at-large NCAA tournament aspirations, the Huskies main task now is to not let Monday’s rout on the big stage bleed into future games.
“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 men’s hockey returns 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.