LOWELL — Northeastern headed up to the Tsongas Center Saturday night with the wind back under their wings.
After riding a four-game losing streak into the weekend, the Huskies had put together one of their best top-to-bottom efforts Friday night and looked to be on a rebound to right out the last few weeks of the season. But the road game was the killer. In the second of the home-and-home series, No. 13 UMass Lowell found the cracks in Northeastern’s lineup and blew past them to a 3-1 victory.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad effort for the Huskies. It was simply the flaws of the team showing up against a strong and physical River Hawks squad.
Lowell blasted out of the gates toward freshman goalie Quentin Sigurdson the second the puck dropped. However, after four minutes of a dominant River Hawks offense, the Huskies settled into their skates. After the opening flurry, the home team couldn’t get a single shot on goal for the rest of the period and Northeastern held momentum with a 9-5 shots advantage.
The Huskies rode that into the second period, potting their sole goal three minutes into the frame off a beautiful one-timer from freshman Griffin Erdman in his first career goal.
Northeastern’s fourth line has been good for scrappy performances in the back half of the season, setting things up for the Huskies’ top scorers, but they rarely get any production out of it themselves. That’s because Northeastern’s goals are frequently individual efforts. This fourth-line scoring play, however, was a beautiful example of what you can do when the lines start to gel. Sophomore center Andy Moore slid a pass between the dots to a wide-open Erdman, who blasted it past Lowell goaltender Henry Welsch.
But Lowell’s a team that likes to wear out their opponents. They play a hard, physical game, and Northeastern struggled to battle back cleanly against the physicality.
After opening the scoring, the Huskies spent nine minutes on the penalty kill. It started with a major and a game misconduct against defender Jake Boltmann, who cross-checked freshman Lee Parks under the chin with his stick. Then, once they were nearly in the clear with just 10 seconds remaining in the 5-on-4, junior forward Nick Rhéaume headed to the box, extending the PK to nearly seven consecutive minutes.
With a new structure this weekend, the PK looked solid, even when different personnel had to come out to replace tired skaters. It should’ve been an energy boost for the Huskies. Instead, another two-minute minor ensued just minutes later, and this one was the killer. The River Hawks crashed the net, and after a pipe shot and an overall flurry, they finally broke past Sigurdson.
The freshman dropped a hot rebound right onto the waiting stick of Parks, who swerved the puck around Sigurdson to tie the game 1-1.
Late in the period, Vinny Borgesi took his second matching minor of the weekend, this time with Connor Eddy. All in all, over half the second period was spent with a Husky in the box.
Early in the third frame, the River Hawks got on top with a solo show from captain Pierson Brandon. The graduate student stripped the puck off the stick of freshman Ben Poitras and walked into the offensive end, where he hammered it in the far-side post from the top of the left circle past Northeastern’s backcheck.
The Huskies thought they had a chance to get back in it late in the game when Moore set up another opportunity, this time for the first line. The forward sent a shot into the chest of Welsch and the rebound skittered to his right where Lowell’s Nick Anderson sent Cam Lund spilling to the ice. With the chaos in front, sophomore Dylan Hyrckowian found a lane to curl around the back of the net and sweep the puck in to tie the game.
After review, the referees ruled it no goal on account of a hand pass against a sprawled-out Lund. It’s an arguable call. After Lund’s brush with the puck, Anderson seemed to have gotten a tap on it before Hryckowian, but the refs made their decision, keeping the game 2-1 in favor of the River Hawks.
“They protect leads well and we just had to keep at it,” said Northeastern head coach Jerry Keefe. They weren’t going to give us much … I assume [the referees] got the call right, I haven’t seen it yet.”
On the opposing end, UMass Lowell head coach Norm Bazin was much more sure of the call.
“It was definitely a hand pass, and we were pretty confident that it was, and they confirmed that,” he said.
Once the empty net was available, Lowell’s Jak Vaarwerk put the last nail in the coffin: a 3-1 win for the River Hawks at home.
It wasn’t a bad weekend for the Huskies. After a tough string of games, including last place in the Beanpot tournament, they came back with a decent effort and a series split against a top-20 team. With just three weeks left in the season and sitting at 10th of 11 teams in Hockey East, it’s not a pretty spot for Northeastern, but it seems they aren’t throwing in the towel just yet.
The Huskies will remain on the road Friday night when they head to rival Boston University. Amelia Ballingall, Daisy Roberts, and Armaan Vij will have the call for the dogfight at 7 p.m.