Final: Huskies 2, Notre Dame 1

Northeastern completed the sweep last night with a 2-1 victory over the Irish.

Photo Courtesy of Dave Luca

The Basics

• Braden Pimm and Steve Quailer scored goals for NU.
• Anthony Bitetto, Garrett Vermeersch, and Chris Rawlings all had an assist.
• Chris Rawlings saved 22 of 23 shots.
• The Huskies were outshot 23-15.
• NU was 1-5 on the PP. Notre Dame was 1-6.

What You Need to Know

• It was a much different game last night, but Huskies were still able to prevail.
• Notre Dame took the lead early on the PP, but the Huskies fought back.
• This might be the first game all  year where the Huskies didnt score an even strength goal.  Quailer’s was a PP and Pimm’s was 4 on 4.
• Rawlings was huge as he has been all year.   He is a different guy this year.
• Its now a 5 game winning streak with 3 straight road wins.

Lines:

Karlsson-Vermeersch-Saponari

Ferriero-Pimm-Quailer

Tuckerman-Daniels-Manno

Reid-Stone-Vrolyk

D:

Bitetto-Cornell

Eibler-Manson

Ellement-Daniels

Thoughts

Think about where this team was a month ago. Frustration was at its peak and it felt like they couldn’t do anything but lose by 1.   People were losing faith in the players and coaches.  And it looked like it was going to be another long season.

Fast forward to today.  A players only meeting, a few more adjustments from the coaching staff, some line shuffling and look what you’ve got.  This team is amazing.  You could spend hours talking about all of the guys who look 100x better this season.  Rawlings, Vermeersch, Pimm, Ferriero, Quailer, Justin Daniels, Drew Ellement.  I don’t even recognize half of these guys.  Garrett Vermeersch has gone from 4th line puckhog to one of the best playmakers on the team.  Braden Pimm has gone from a grinder to the guy the offense revolves around. Ferriero and Quailer look dangerous everytime they touch the puck.   Its amazing.

The newcomers havent hurt either.   Ludwig Karlsson is the best freshman in Hockey East.  By far.  Vinny Saponari isn’t showing up on the score sheet as much as we thought, but he has had a huge impact.  And where would this team be without the solid play of Dan Cornell?

This team was given an impossible schedule to start the year, especially when their coach was returning to the bench after 18 years.  SO an adjustment period was expected.  And thats what happened.  But they way they were losing was killed the fans.  Those were winnable games for the most part.

Now this team has come together and they are just awesome.  They have played the 8th toughest schedule in the NCAA.   They are now in the top 25 for RPI and the Pairwise Rankings.   Its too early to care about those right now, but it still means something.  The schedule is getting easier and this team has not played themselves out of anything yet.   Home ice and/or an NCAA berth is very much in the question.  It won’t be easy, but with the way this team has played it is certainly do able.

So thank you to the coaching staff and every single player on the team for turning this thing around.  It has been a pleasure to watch the team over the past couple weekends and we can’t help but feel like bigger things are ahead for this team.  We are drinking the kool-aid.