College hockey is a funny game. And No. 5 Northeastern is in a bit of a funny spot.
Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s Hockey East Championship, the Huskies would have likely traveled to Minneapolis to take on the Golden Gophers, even if they had secured the No. 4 national rank with a win.
Not having a home arena led to the aforementioned game being played at UConn, the record-breaking crowd (2,168 fans) acting as a major factor as to why the tournament’s second-seed was able to win in double overtime. If Northeastern couldn’t even host their conference tournament final, I personally find it tricky to believe they’d end up hosting a national game, top-four spot or not.
So yes, the results of the Hockey East Championship likely did not matter in terms of Northeastern’s next matchup. But momentum is and always has been the name of the game in college hockey. And after riding high through some incredibly gritty victories over the last month, with countless absences and plenty of overtime winners, Northeastern found itself deflated by a truly heartbreaking loss after nearly 95 minutes of exhaustion.
And yet, because of their three regular-season wins over No. 6 UConn, Northeastern remained fifth in the NCAA Power Index rankings after Saturday’s results, even with a loss. A win would have them leapfrog Minnesota into fourth, but as I said, they probably would have made the trip to Minneapolis regardless.
The real tall task for the Huskies to tackle this week is to regroup and refocus, especially after Saturday’s results. Minnesota poses a challenge unlike anything this group of athletes has faced before, and Northeastern will need to be at its strongest to take them down.
The last time Northeastern beat a WCHA team dates all the way back to March 12, 2022, when the then No. 3-ranked Huskies beat No. 5 Wisconsin to advance to that year’s Frozen Four.
Following that win, Northeastern has gone 0-3 against Midwest opponents, losing in the Frozen Four semifinals in back-to-back years to Minnesota-Duluth (a week after that Wisconsin win back in 2022), Ohio State the year after, and most recently, St. Cloud State in the 2023 Ice Breaker tournament.
Since then, head coach Dave Flint has opted to face more local competition in the non-conference schedule, taking on teams such as Penn State, Princeton, Yale, and Quinnipiac in recent years.
Now don’t get me wrong: these teams are nothing to scoff at. The rise of competition and balance across the NCAA has been fantastic to witness over the years, and there is a ton of talent all across the East Coast. It’s not like Northeastern hasn’t been playing any high-caliber teams, as all four of those non-conference competitors are in the nation’s Top 15 as well.
But when the top three teams for the majority of the season were the WCHA trio of Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Minnesota (who only dropped to fourth after a five-game losing streak during the Olympics), it does seem a bit daunting to make the trek further west.
But the key to Northeastern’s path to victory, and hence a Frozen Four, can be spotted at the exact spot of the Golden Gophers’ season where they tumbled into the four-spot.
We all got to witness Team USA win a gold medal in Milan, and it was brilliant to see some of the young collegiate stars of the game shine, like Wisconsin’s Caroline Harvey, Laila Edwards, Ava McNaughton, and Kirsten Simms, Penn State’s Tessa Janecke, Ohio State’s Joy Dunne, and Minnesota’s Abbey Murphy.
And there it is, folks.
Minnesota went on a six-game winless streak (a tie that led to a shootout win followed by five losses) that timed up exactly with Murphy’s departure to Italy, from Feb. 7 to Feb. 27, with Murphy only present for the most recent game in that stretch.
Of course, Minnesota lost three other skaters to their respective national teams: defender Nelli Laitinen (Finland) and forwards Josefin Bouveng (Sweden) and Teresa Plosová (Czechia). Of the four losses the Golden Gophers suffered during that Olympic stretch, two were against Ohio State and two against Minnesota-Duluth.
The former sent five current skaters to Milan, the latter, two.
So it’s not like Minnesota’s opponents were at full strength either.
But now back at full power, the Gophers and their high-octane style of offense will be a formidable test for Northeastern. They rank second in the country with 171 goals this season, averaging a massive 4.5 goals per game.
Murphy alone, in just 30 games, scored 38 of those goals, also second in the country behind ECAC player of the year Kahlen Lamarche, who essentially beat Northeastern singlehandedly in the series with Quinnipiac back in October. Lamarche scored seven goals in two games against the Huskies, and she doesn’t have nearly as strong a supporting cast as Murphy does with Minnesota.
The difference, though, between Minnesota and all the other top-ranked teams in the NCAA is on the defensive side of the puck. They rank 16th in the nation in goals allowed per game at 2.2, in a very similar range as some familiar Hockey East opponents like Vermont, Boston University, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Sophomore goaltender Hannah Clark, who has started the majority of Minnesota’s games this season, ranks 19th in the nation with a 1.99 GAA and a very middle-of-the-road 30th in save percentage, with a .923 clip.
On the flip side, Lisa Jönsson, Northeastern’s typical starter, stands seventh in the country in GAA (1.60) and sixth in save percentage (.941), and is coming off a career-high in saves, posting 54 in Saturday’s Hockey East Championship.
Jönsson has been known for allowing basketball-esque rebounds that have put the Huskies in precarious positions this season, one of those being the sudden-death game-winner this past Saturday. But with the right positioning and help from the defense in front of her, her 5’11” frame allows her to make some freakishly athletic plays in the crease that very few netminders have the physical ability to do.
If you look at the same period of time when Minnesota went on its winless streak and parallel it with Northeastern’s schedule, it overlapped with the exact time Northeastern lost five skaters, three of which were top-six caliber forwards out with injury. The Huskies played in some of their grittiest games of the season and came out with a 4-1 record over that stretch, all while fielding incomplete lines.
While the opponents they faced were mostly unranked, they were all at full strength, and three of those games ended up going to overtime, one of which was a hard-fought 3-2 victory against No. 6 UConn.
It was a major test of Northeastern’s resiliency, and while they may have faltered in the Hockey East Championship, we’ve all borne witness to the strength of this team’s will in the hard moments.
There is certainly a world where Northeastern’s defense stands strong, and top scorers like Hockey East Player of the Year Stryker Zablocki and First-Team All-Star Lily Shannon can put enough pucks past Clark to send Northeastern to their fourth-ever Frozen Four. The physical ability to take down Minnesota is absolutely there.
The real test for the Huskies, though, is in the mental game.
This season has been such a mentally challenging one for Northeastern, with the loss of its home arena a shadow over all of 2026. Can they, after such a heartbreaking loss a week prior, rebound and attack on the ice like we’ve seen them do all year?
If there’s any group that can, it’s this pack of Huskies. And if they can overcome the roadblocks in their own heads, the physical game will come.
Either way, it’s the national tournament. The teams are both straight-up very good. Minneapolis is certainly in for a treat, and I, for one, can’t wait to see them put on a show.
Tune in to Daisy Roberts and Armaan Vij on the call for WRBB Sports for the NCAA Quarterfinals between No. 4 Minnesota and No. 5 Northeastern Saturday, March 14, with puck drop set for 3:00 p.m. EDT.
Daisy Roberts is a hockey, basketball, and baseball broadcaster and writer for WRBB Sports. She has been covering Northeastern Athletics for five years. You can read her content here and follow her on X here.