Final: UNH 3, Huskies 2

Northeastern suffered a big defeat on Friday at the hands of UNH 3-2.

Photo Courtesy of Dave Luca

The Basics

• Robbie Vrolyk and Mike McLaughlin both scored.
• McLaughlin, Luke Eibler, and Drew Daniels had assists.
• Chris Rawlings saved 28 out of 31 shots, but the first two goals were awful.  You can see them here.  Yes, the second one was scored from behind the net.  Yes, that happened last year in Durham too.
• NU had 26 shots to UNH’s 31.
• NU was 0-1 on the PP. UNH was 0-2.

What You Need to Know

• Robbie Vrolyk put the Huskies up 1-0 just 30 seconds into the game.
• For the next 5-7 minutes the Huskies dominated, the puck barely left the offensive zone, but they couldn’t score
• Then Rawlings let in the softest goal ever, until a few minutes later when he let in the softest goal ever.
• And that was about it, for the rest of the game the Huskies skated around and didn’t do anything really.  They didn’t play bad defensively, but they barely even set up in the UNH zone.   Between the play on the ice and the lack of any sort of noise from the student section, it became a battle to stay awake and pay attention.
• Then the Huskies realized there was only 2 minutes left and they trailed by 2, so they started playing again.   They got one with an extra attacker, but couldn’t find the second.
• Steve Morra played in place of Dongara.   He was on the 4th line.  They got literally 3 shifts all night.

Lines:

Karlsson-Pimm-Saponari

Reid-Vermeersch-Manno

Vrolyk-McLaughlin-Tuckerman

Daniels-Stone-Morra

D:

Bitetto-Cornell

Eibler-Manson

Ellement-Daniels

Thoughts

Another loss at the Whittemore Center for NU.  Not much to say on this one.  Bad goaltending killed their great start and then it was basically just going through the motions.  The loss gives UNH a nice cushion and the tiebreaker.  Northeastern still has a good shot to make the playoffs, but not if they play like that.   At this point, who cares if they make the playoffs?  With efforts like this, I am not exactly thrilled at the prospect of 2 more away games.