Posts Tagged ‘Merrimack’

First hockey winning streak all season, with the Huskies taking 3 in a row over the past two weeks. Their win on Friday at Michigan was their third win over the Wolverines in four tries, and part of now a 4-game home losing streak for the Maize & Blue. The story of the game was the line combination of Quailer-Pimm-Ferriero, which accounted for all four goals on the night. (WRBB Sports)

Mike McLaughlin has been out of the lineup and is not practicing with the team after breaking his jaw in Northeastern’s 5-2 win over Providence two weeks ago. He is expected to remain out of the lineup for a few weeks, but there is no hard timeframe for his return.

An upset win over St. John’s was certainly the story for Northeastern, after a career performance by Joel Smith but the New York tabloids focused instead on the absense of St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin (Daily News | New York Post). Tonight at La Salle in Philadelphia the Huskies will look to start a seadon at 4-1 for the first time since starting 4-0 in 2005-06 – JJ Barea’s senior year.

Bill Coen talked about the distribution of playing time and his lineup in a chat with Mike Litos. There’s been plenty of competition for spots in the lineup, and for the first time in a long while, the Huskies have noticeable and useable depth. The lack of Ryan Pierson getting significant minutes and Alex Bates getting any minutes at all during this strech is a a testament to that.

Women’s hockey hits the skids after a blazing start to the year. The Huskies have lost three straight, including a series sweep against Boston College and a tough OT loss to Dartmouth. NU still remains ranked 10th in the latest USCHO poll, but worringly they are no longer ranked in the PairWise. Part of the problem is in strength of schedule – most of NU’s early wins came against beatable teams. The Huskies have yet to claim that marquee win, something that will have to change if they want a shot at a bid to the NCAA tournament.

Women’s basketball is now on a 17-game losing streak dating back to last year. Give Northeastern credit for trying to promote the team and improve attendance early this year, but it may be all for naught.

Outside of Northeastern…

Merrimack may be ranked #1, but as USCHO points out, they’ve yet to play more than 1 team under consideration in the Pairwise. We’ve been talking about Merrimack’s weak schedule since mid-October, but it’ll be interesting to see if that comes back to bite the Warriors later this year.

Boston University sure loves playing at MSG every other year, and that’s expected to continue, according to the Daily Free Press’ hockey blog. Saturday was the third sellout in three tries at Madison Square Garden. Of course, BU’s win wasn’t without controversy, as College Hockey News reports. Oddly enough, Northeastern was slated to play a game at the Garden last year against Niagara – the contracts were signed – but the deal collapsed and the game was moved to Matthews Arena.

There’s a new CAA Basketball Bloggers poll made by the hard-working folks at VCU RamNation (without a doubt the best fan-oriented site in the league).

WRBB Sports Basketball, Hockey BU, CAA, Merrimack, St. John's, Women's Basketball, women's hockey

Mike Collins scored two goals in Saturday's game. (Photo: Hockey East)

After Friday night’s 1-1 draw, you couldn’t blame Northeastern fans for at least holding cautious optimism looking towards Saturday’s game to wrap up the season series against the Merrimack College Warriors. What followed was a comeback from two goals down for Merrimack, and a gut-wrenching loss for Northeastern. Merrimack won Saturday’s contest 3-2 on a shorthanded breakaway goal from Ryan Flanigan, the decorated Merrimack senior, leaving the Huskies with one Hockey East point gained on the weekend, and two losses in their season series against Merrimack. Box scores here: NU 1, MC 1 | MC 3, NU 4 (F/OT)

Our thoughts on the weekend after the jump… Read more…

Alex Faust Hockey Merrimack

Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy praised his team’s effort level especially late in the game to stay tough and pick up a win on the road.

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After the game, NU coach Jim Madigan liked his team’s effort level, but execution remains a serious problem.

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WRBB Sports Hockey, Press Pass Merrimack

Mike Collins scores two to erase Northeastern’s two goal lead before the Warriors capitalize on a mistake to win in overtime, 3-2.

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WRBB Sports Hockey, QuickCast Merrimack

Northeastern coach Jim Madigan talks about his team’s good effort on the road in a tight 1-1 draw at Merrimack College.

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WRBB Sports Hockey, Press Pass Merrimack

In a hard-fought game, Northeastern earns a 1-1 tie, disrupting Merrimack’s 6-game winning streak and getting a much needed Hockey East point.

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WRBB Sports Hockey, QuickCast Merrimack

Monday, October 31

7:00 p.m. – CAA Full Court Press

Thursday, November 3

9:00 p.m. – Hockey East This Week

Friday, October 4

3:00 p.m. – Dog Pound Sports Sound

6:45 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey Pre-Game
7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey: Huskies at Merrimack College Warriors
from Thom J. Lawler Arena in North Andover, Mass.
with Ben Horner and Alex Faust

7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Women’s Hockey: Huskies vs. UConn Huskies
from Matthews Arena
with Andy Towne
Available on WRBB Sports Extra

Saturday, October 5

6:45 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey Pre-Game
7:00 p.m. – Northeastern Hockey: Huskies vs. Merrimack College Warriors
from Matthews Arena
with Alex Faust, Ben Horner, and TBA

WRBB Sports Hockey Merrimack, UConn, women's hockey

Merrimack employed its classic grinding forecheck and leveraged a 27-save performance from Joe Cannata to take a fairly dominant 4-1 victory over Northeastern. Click for the Box Score

Instead of providing a game recap that you can get anywhere else, here our our takeaways from the game – our ‘post-game bullet points’ if you will:

• A poor “compete” level doomed NU on Friday night. If there’s a phrase that Jim Madigan loves to use, it’s “compete level,” and NU did not have it on Friday. For a team that used to have an identity of a stingy, pesky, forechecking team (not all that dissimilar to Merrimack), they were unable to settle into that game plan. “We couldn’t sustain any consistent forecheck or get pucks to their net,” Madigan said after the game. A pretty succinct description of Northeastern’s troubles.
• Chris Rawlings played very well and made some impressive saves both from long range and on goal-mouth scrambles. If not for his performance, the Huskies would have been down 3-0 or 4-0 going into the third period, and he deserves credit for a good effort. Getting pulled in the third period was not because of a poor job, but because the team needed a spark. The intensity did pick up after he was pulled, but by then, with 11 minutes remaining and the Huskies in a 3-0 hole, it was too late.
• If time-of-possession were a stat, Merrimack would have easily won it. Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy mentioned two things in his post-game press conference that Northeastern can learn a lot from: his team’s game plan is to win the time-of-possession battle. You can’t score if you don’t have the puck, and Merrimack certainly did that well, not only when they were aiming to extend the lead up 1-0, but after the game was well in hand, they continued to win battles in the corners and along the boards. Dennehy’s second point was to not let his team take the bait from a talkative NU team and just stay focused on their own game plan. Despite a few defensemen jawing at Merrimack players, it didn’t get under their skin.  Credit to ‘Mack on that one.
• Good play from Quailer, Vermeersch, Karlsson, and Manno. All four of these players played well on offense – Quailer’s skating is better by leaps and bounds over last year, while Vermeersch has become more responsible as a forechecker and has toned down his ‘video game’ style moves with the puck. Karlsson and Manno skated very strong as freshmen.
• Playing on the road may be an issue. Though it’s only been two road games thus far, very little has been encouraging from NU’s road performances thus far. We’ll see if the team can bounce back at home against a very skilled Boston College team on Saturday.

Alex Faust Hockey Merrimack

Merrimack stuck with the game plan and suffocated Northeastern all night, coming away with a 4-1 win at Lawler Arena.

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WRBB Sports Hockey, QuickCast Merrimack