BOSTON — As the second half of the season began Saturday night at Matthews Arena, the American International Yellow Jackets had a plan. A 3-1 loss to No. 8 Northeastern may have been a moral victory years ago, but times have changed, and that was not the case this time around.
The pesky Yellow Jackets, who beat a nationally ranked opponent in Penn State earlier in the season, tied the game at 1-1 in the second period before the Huskies used third-period goals from Zach Solow and Matt Filipe to earn the win.
“These guys won’t ever quit,” second-year AIC head coach Eric Lang said. “I told them that there are no moral victories here. The standard is higher for AIC hockey than it’s ever been. That might have been a moral victory going a couple years back, but that’s not the bar we’ve set. I think our guys are disappointed, and I like that they’re disappointed.”
The Huskies held a 12-8 shot advantage over a scoreless first period and notched the game’s first goal on a power play just 1:06 into the second. After junior leading scorer Adam Gaudette fired a shot off the post from the bottom of the left circle, senior linemate Nolan Stevens played the carom in the slot and beat AIC freshman Stefano Durante for his 10th goal of the season.
AIC had a golden chance to knot the score at the tail end of its third penalty kill of the game a few minutes later, but Northeastern freshman Cayden Primeau came up with a key blocker save on Jared Pike’s short-handed chance from the bottom of the right circle.
The Yellow Jackets did knot the score before the end of the middle stanza. At the 14:27 mark, sophomore centerman Joel Kocur dropped a pass to Brennan Kapcheck in the right circle, and the freshman defenseman roofed a wrist shot under the crossbar to Primeau’s glove side.
“Credit AIC because I just thought they worked hard and out-battled us, wanted the puck more than us,” Northeastern coach Jim Madigan said. “For two periods, we didn’t play to our identity regardless of who the opponent is.
“If it wasn’t for Cayden Primeau tonight, we lose the hockey game. He was just outstanding.”
The tie score was as close as AIC would come against Primeau, who made 11 of his 24 stops in the second period en route to the victory.
Northeastern’s best period of the night was the third as it scored twice and held a 12-5 shot advantage. Solow scored the winner at 7:17 after taking Bowling Green transfer Brandon Hawkins’ cross-ice feed from the neutral zone. Solow worked the puck around his defender and whipped his fourth goal of the season home from the left side.
“I’ll give our guys kudos for responding; we played better in the third period and finally got some offense going,” Madigan said. “I thought (the winning goal) was a big play for Zach, who hadn’t scored in a little bit. … I just liked the move he made, and he just shot it right off the dribble.”
AIC pulled Durante in the final minute, but couldn’t find an equalizer. Matt Filipe sent a slow empty-net goal down ice from his own zone with 15 seconds remaining.
While Lang won’t let his Yellow Jackets take away a moral victory, there were certainly positives to take away. Durante made double-digit saves in the first and third periods, finishing the game with 28. The rookie netminder, whose goals against-average led Atlantic Hockey entering the game, provided just one of those positives.
“We had three goals tonight,” Lang said. “The first one was to get better as the game went along because we had some time off, and I thought we checked that box. Second was to control the middle of the ice and defend real hard; if they were going to score, they were going to have to go through a lot of us, and I thought we did that. The third was to stay out of the penalty box, and we didn’t check that box.
“I think you get what you deserve, but that team can score a lot of goals. For us to hold them to two goals for 59 minutes, I’m certainly proud of the way we defended.”
