Chris Rawlings made 38 saves on Saturday (Photo: Hockey East)

BOSTON — It’s a game that UMass-Lowell wants back, without a doubt. With 4:06 remaining in the third period and down a goal (but on the power play), Lowell coach Norm Bazin called a timeout to draw up a play. What astonished the 2,075 in attendance at Matthews Arena was that he sent an extra-attacker unit onto the ice, leaving the net empty. Northeastern promptly made them pay: after Lowell won the ensuing faceoff, the Huskies deflected a cross-ice pass, Steve Quailer picked up the loose puck from in between the circles and fired it straight down the ice into the back of the empty net, making the game 3-1. While hardly sealing the outcome (UML scored on another power play to make it 3-2, threatening several times in the final minutes), that single moment cost Lowell a reasonable shot at defeating Northeastern. As it turned out, Quailer’s goal was the game-winner, vaulting Northeastern to a six-game winning streak and ending a five-game winning streak for the Riverhawks.

Click here for the box score

Our thoughts on the game after the jump…

Our observations

• Chris Rawlings turned in another impressive performance, stopping 38 of 40 shots (many of them grade-A chances) en route to the victory. Rawlings’ lateral movesment and vision have been absolutely superb since the beginning of November. In fact, since sitting out one game (at UNH on October 29), Rawlings yet to allow more than three goals in a game. From Joe Meloni’s CHN piece, we also have these stats: during the 6-game winning streak, Rawlings has allowed just 9 goals and has a .951 save percentage. Rawlings has seen an elevated number of shots all year, but that has yet to faze him, and he now has the 8th-highest save percentage in the nation.
• The tight play came from two physical, aggressive teams who were very evenly matched – lots of scoring chances were disrupted by backchecking defensemen or on strong pokechecks. Aside from the added flair and skill on the puck, and it was a classic NU-UML grind of a game. The good fortune came from two of  Northeastern’s goals: Adam Reid’s second career goal was a centering pass that was deflected into the net off of defenseman Chad Ruwahdel, and later Quailer’s empty netter put the game away.
• The offense, while still productive, risks becoming a bit overconfident, with some attempted dangles from Cody Ferriero easily suffocated and a bit too much passing even when open shots were available. On several occasions, Northeastern had odd-man rushes or promising transition plays, but instead of electing for a simpler approach, unnecessary or dangerous passes were attempted, spoiling scoring chances. Coach Jim Madigan agreed: “I thought we were inconsistent throughout the course of the game and I thought our legs looked a little heavy at times,” Madigan said, adding that the play was, “maybe a little too fancy here or there.”
• Lowell is skating with a lot of confidence, and this loss won’t hurt that; at least it shouldn’t. Their success seems to be a self-feeding cycle: having a healthy defensive corps (good strong play from backcheckers on Saturday night disrupted a few NU one-on-one chances) supports impressive goaltender Doug Carr, and that has fed into a confident, aggressive offensive approach. Despite Bazin’s blunder allowing the empty net goal, nothing we saw Saturday showed that it shouldn’t continue for the Riverhawks.
• Northeastern’s special teams play is still an achilles’ heel, as the power play continues to come up empty and the penalty kill has allowed goals in all but a handful of games this year. Perhaps over the holiday break these items will be addressed by coach Jim Madigan.
• It’s a historic winning streak, the first 6-game streak in over a decade (last time there were six wins in a row was the 1997-98 season). NU is outscoring opponents by a 3-to-1 margin over the streak, and have allowed an average of 1.5 goals per game. More notes available here, courtesy of Northeastern hockey SID Mark Majewski.

 Quotable

“There’s going to be a lot of one-goal games in this league, and you have to find a way to win those games. I credit our guys for finding a way to win the game… these were two big points.” — Northeastern coach Jim Madigan

“We don’t like to give up odd-man ruses, but we’re okay with giving up a few here and there to try and score goals because we’ve got him back there.“ — Cody Ferriero, on Chris Rawlings’ play

“It’s still a long ways to go if we’re going to be a contending team in a conference like this. We try to take it one game at a time. We try to stay in the moment. If we get ahead of ourselves that’s when we get in trouble.” — UMass-Lowell coach Norm Bazin

What others saw

The Ice Is Life:

And it was perhaps because of that dominance that Bazin made easily the single-worst coaching decision we’ve seen in years, which directly led to Lowell’s embarrassing 3-2 loss in its final game before break.Let’s be perfectly clear: Bazin has certainly had the Midas touch this season. Every decision he made after pronouncing Doug Carr the starter (a week too late) has been letter-perfect, and he is, obviously, one of the many reasons Lowell is currently 10-5. But tonight, he became the reason it’s not 11-4-1 at least.

Husky Hockey Blog:

So on nights like tonight, yes NU got outshot, but how many of Lowell’s shots had a good chance of going in?  Not many.  I think the team has figured this out and they are willing to allow shots as long as they can clog the middle and keep the Grade A chances down, which they have done a great job of doing during the win streak.  Rawlings’ numbers and play have been fantastic during this stretch, but the defense deserve a ton of credit too.

Alex Faust Hockey UMass-Lowell