Both Boston University and Northeastern entered Friday night’s intra-city grudge match at Matthews Arena in the bottom half of Hockey East in scoring offense and power play efficiency.<\/p>\n
But after 13 goals, three power-play tallies for each team, and one thrilling college hockey game, neither team has to worry about scoring goals anymore.<\/p>\n
“The best part of the game aside from the two points was getting our power play back on track,” said BU coach Jack Packer after watching his team hold off a late surge by Northeastern to win, 7-6. “We had problems scoring goals and problems on the power play before, but we figured those out tonight.”<\/p>\n
Trailing 3-1 after first-period goals by Northeastern forwards Jason Guerriero, Mike Ryan and Scott Selig, the Terriers (3-1-2, 1-1-0 HEA) erupted for five goals in the second to take control.<\/p>\n
“They made us look like a pee-wee team in the second period,” said Northeastern coach Bruce Crowder.<\/p>\n
The flurry began at 1:19, when Ryan Whitney broke a 0-for-18 power play slump by one-timing a pass from Brian McConnell past Northeastern goaltender Keni Gibson.<\/p>\n
After that, two quick goals by BU assistant captain John Sabo put the Terriers ahead to stay. <\/p>\n
The first came on a backhander through Gibson’s five-hole at 4:09, then Sabo rebounded his own shot for BU’s second power play goal of the game about two minutes later.<\/p>\n
“He’s playing with a lot of confidence now,” Parker said of Sabo, who now has two multi-goal games this season. “He’s not up-tight out there. He’s just working hard.”<\/p>\n
Less than four minutes after Sabo’s second goal, McConnell, who finished the game with three assists, stormed down the left wing on a 3-on-2 before feathering a gorgeous pass through the slot to defenseman Bryan Miller, who roofed his first goal of the season to make it 5-3.<\/p>\n
“He’s a great playmaker,” Parker said of McConnell. “All of my wings keep telling me that they want to play with him.”<\/p>\n
The Terriers completed their second period frenzy at 12:32, when junior Mark Mullen sent a pristine, cross-ice pass from the point to freshman David Van der Gulik, who was waiting on the doorstep to Gibson’s right and beat him top-shelf to make it 6-3.<\/p>\n
But urged on by a raucous home crowd of 4,345, the Huskies countered BU’s dominant second period with a workmanlike third that nearly forced overtime.<\/p>\n
Northeastern (1-3-2, 0-1-1) took its first bite out of BU’s lead at 7:03, when sophomore Jared Mudryk put a wrister past BU netminder Sean Fields from between the hashes. Huskies freshman standout Mike Morris then made it 6-5 on a blast from the slot at 12:07.<\/p>\n
However, a huge power play goal by BU with less than 7 minutes remaining swung the momentum back the other way.<\/p>\n
With Northeastern center Brian Tudrick in the box for cross-checking, Miller centered BU sophomore Justin Maiser, whose blast from the slot rung the crossbar before falling behind Northeastern freshman Tim Heneroty. Heneroty made 15 third-period saves in relief of Gibson.<\/p>\n
“We got caught out of position all over the place in the third period,” Parker said. “But we kept our poise in the end. That was a huge power-play goal.”<\/p>\n
But again, Huskies refused to go down without a fight. On the power play, NU sophomore Jason Guerriero — who finished with four points on the night — sent a cross-ice pass to Huskies captain Mike Ryan, who was waiting at the top of the right faceoff circle. Ryan’s blast found a sliver of space above Fields’s shoulder, cutting the BU lead to one with 3:36 to play.<\/p>\n
The equalizer eluded Northeastern, even after Crowder pulled Heneroty with 51 seconds left. Nevertheless, Crowder was pleased with his team’s effort.<\/p>\n
“Give credit to our guys,” he said. “We battled back, but we just didn’t battle back enough.”<\/p>\n
Gibson, who had a .926 save percentage heading into the game, stopped just 15 of 21 shots in the first two periods.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure Keni wants some of those goals back, but some of those pucks had eyes, too,” Crowder said. “He had a good week of practice and he’s a good goalie. This was just one of those nights.”<\/p>\n
Fields, meanwhile, made 21 saves for the Terriers. BU travels to No. 1 New Hampshire for a Hockey East showdown on Saturday night, while Northeastern plays host to Massachusetts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Both Boston University and Northeastern entered Friday night’s intra-city grudge match at Matthews Arena in the bottom half of Hockey East in scoring offense and power play efficiency. But after 13 goals, three power-play tallies for each team, and one thrilling college hockey game, neither team has to worry about scoring goals anymore. “The best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3584"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}