BOSTON — Cameron Whitehead dropped his head down to ice. Joe Connor fell to a knee, then went to console his desolate netminder. Jack Williams, who had played over 29 minutes despite battling the flu, could hardly move as he stared blankly from the bench.
The Huskies had arrived at a moment almost no one else foresaw just eight days earlier. First, they won a double-overtime marathon at Merrimack in the opening round. Then, they stunned No. 1 Boston College to become the first No. 9 seed to ever advance to the league semifinals. And now, they erased a two-goal deficit against Maine at TD Garden, putting them one shot away from the championship game.
The opportunity was there for the taking. The confidence was riding higher than it had been all season. Their goalie was playing lights out.
But the tank just ran empty.
In a thriller that lasted nearly four hours, second-seeded Maine (22-7-6) overcame ninth-seeded Northeastern (14-20-3) in a 4-3 double overtime victory at TD Garden. The Black Bears dominated both overtime periods before Charlie Russell finally ended things by firing a sharp-angle shot off Nolan Renwick’s shin and into the back of the net in the 92nd minute.
The win propleed Maine to their first Hockey East title game in over a decade, and ended the Huskies’ season short of the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive season — but with reason to feel prideful about how they went out.
“Just getting to the final four teams and being in a double overtime, having two huge playoff wins, that’s something to be really proud of in this league,” said Northeastern head coach Jerry Keefe.
Northeastern had been more competitive in the final weeks of the regular season, highlighted by their 5-1 triumph over No. 10 BU at Agganis Arena on Feb. 21. But still, the Huskies lost four of their final five games headed into the postseason, including a 7-1 laugher against UConn in which Whitehead gave up four goals on 17 shots.
From the outside, there was little reason to believe the Huskies had this postseason surge in them. But after Northeastern’s 3-2 loss to Providence in the regular season finale, Keefe offered this: “I think our team is waiting for the playoffs, or I should say, looking forward to the playoffs. I think this is a group that feels like when we play well, we can beat anybody.”
And that turned out to be completely true.
Whitehead was excellent in a 44-save effort against Merrimack in the opening round of the postseason, and then stopped 30 of 31 shots against No. 1 BC on Saturday in a signature performance of his Northeastern career.
On Thursday, Whitehead was arguably the best player on the ice once again, making a career-high 57 saves and surviving chance after chance by the Black Bears as they hemmed in the Huskies in the late third period and throughout overtime.
“He responded and showed up in the big games when it mattered most. That’s what you need your goaltender to do,” Keefe said of Whitehead. “He gave us a chance to win here in overtime and throughout the playoffs. I know our guys had a lot of confidence in him. Just like our team, I thought we played our best hockey right here at the end, and he obviously led the way in the net.”
Meanwhile, the star trio of Jack Williams (16-25-41), Cam Lund (18-22-40), and Dylan Hryckowian (17-19-36) was reinserted on the top line following the Beanpot Semifinal shellacking on Feb. 3, and became one of the best lines in Hockey East while playing the most ice time of any three forwards in the league.
The Huskies’ forward depth, which had been a weak point all season, finally turned a corner down stretch. Connor took a leap from a promising freshman to a game-breaking presence, and found a rhythm with senior transfer Christophe Tellier on the second line. Alongside the pair of wings, junior Eli Sebastian, a player who struggled to find ice time or find the scoresheet over his first two seasons, finally found his role as a block machine and grinder at second line center.
Even the Huskies’ third-period goal to take a 3-2 lead on Thursday was indicative of how the depth forward pieces rose up: Nick Rhéaume, a transfer from UMass Lowell who was brought in with top-six upside but relegated to the fourth line, made a beautiful dangle to get loose at the right circle, with sophomore Andy Moore crashing in to deliver his first goal in 67 career games.
Juniors Vinny Borgesi and Jackson Dorrington continued to make strides into top defenders in Hockey East, while complemented by excellent transfer portal finds in junior Jo Lemay and graduate senior Jake Boltmann.
All four of them played over 36 minutes on Thursday, and even amid a 92-minute grind, freshman Jack Henry played 18 minutes as the fifth defender, and freshman Seth Constance and graduate senior Jake Higgins played less than five minutes apiece as the sixth and seventh defenders, respectively.
Northeastern has been among the league leaders in blocked shots throughout Keefe’s tenure as head coach, and that trend again continued in the biggest moments of the season. After recording 20 blocks against BC on Saturday, the Huskies had a whopping 42 blocks against Maine — led by five blocks from Lemay and four apiece from Lund, Connor, Boltmann, Williams, and Rhéaume.
“To see a guy like Eli Sebastian play through an injury and go out there, and to see Jack Williams tonight, who’s battling the flu, and he fought through it,” Keefe said. “And they do that because they care. They care about the program, they care about their teammates.”
And while the Huskies hung right with the country’s top teams at the very end, the reality remains that Northeastern was 5-10 in their last 15 games, even including the postseason.
The Huskies still finished the season far better each of the past two years: last year’s squad was 10-4-1 in their final 15 games;, two years ago, the team closed the season with a 9-4-2 record.. Both of those teams also won the Beanpot, though neither returned to the Garden for the Hockey East Semifinals.
And it goes without saying, but things will look different next year.
Reports have already emerged that Lund is likely to sign with the San Jose Sharks, and Williams has generated substantial buzz to ink a deal as an undrafted free agent. A trio of junior defenders — Lemay, Dorrington, and Borgesi — each have another year of eligibility remaining, but their college futures will be worth monitoring in the weeks to come.
And as for Whitehead, just two weeks ago, his sophomore season appeared to be a major regression. After he concluded his freshman campaign with a .917 save percentage and with the most saves of any goalie in Hockey East, he was pulled on three separate occasions this year and benched in mid-February for a freshman backup. But over these past few games, he was the driving factor of why the Huskies reached this point.
Barring any major surprises in the transfer portal, the Huskies will have a different looking roster next year, but still one capable of competing. There were times this season Northeastern could have completely folded, namely following the 4-3 loss to Harvard in the Beanpot consolation game Feb. 10 and the 7-1 loss to UConn on March 1.
But instead, the Huskies gave it a good run down to the end, and walked out of TD Garden on Thursday with nothing left in the tank — but still reason to be content with how they closed.
“I’m proud of the sacrifices guys made to do whatever they could,” Keefe said. “I know it didn’t end the way we wanted to, but I’m also really proud of this group to get here.”
Thank you for following along with WRBB Sports’ coverage of Northeastern Men’s Hockey throughout the season. Stay tuned for offseason coverage in our live tracker on wrbbsports.com.