Even though Northeastern jumped out to a 2-0 lead, Boston University battled back to tie the game with less than five minutes remaining, earning a hard-fought point. It was a physical back-and-forth battle at Matthews Arena in front a loud audience of 4,251.
There was one thing coaches Jack Parker and Greg Cronin could agree on, as they both opened their post game press conferences the same way: “It was a great college hockey game”.
Sophomore Randy Guzior gave the Huskies the lead less than three minutes into the game when he beat Terriers’ netminder Brett Bennett high on the glove side. Guzior came streaking down the boards to Bennett’s
right and ripped a shot that seemed to pin Bennett.
“I was yelling to my line mate, ‘Chip! Chip!’,” said Guzior. “[Kyle Kraemer] got it up to me. Coach has been telling me all week to drive wide so I did it, saw an opening and just shot it right over his glove and it went in. It was a great play by the whole line; it was exactly what we wanted to do.”
Northeastern added to the lead when Wade MacLeod fed a perfect centering pass to Tyler McNeely, who brilliantly one-touched the puck past a sprawled Bennett. It was McNeely’s second goal in the last two games, his third on the season.
“I just saw we were on a two-on-two, and I saw Tyler [McNeely] busting towards the net,” said MacLeod. “I just kind of threw it back to him since I knew he was going hard towards the net and he got a stick on it.”
The Huskies held the lead for the next five minutes before the Terriers added a goal of their own. With Pete MacArthur set up on the back post, Bryan Ewing fed him the puck on a cross-ice feed and MacArthur made no mistake, sending it to the back of the wide open net.
The next forty minutes of hockey was a physical affair, with neither team taking a true advantage. It was not till 15:26 of the third that BU would finally tie things up.
Bryan Ewing pick-pocketed Huskies’ defenseman Jim Driscoll right before he was going to clear the puck out of the zone. Ewing, who was right in the slot, turned around and shot the puck right under the cross bar.It seemed that Huskies’ goalie Brad Thiessen may have gotten a piece of it but not enough to stop it.
“We had good pressure in the zone on the power-play, we were getting good shots off. It kind of just bounced to the middle, their defensemen went to clear it and I lifted his up his stick and put it top cheese,” a smiling Bryan Ewing said post-game.
“Ewing stripped him there, it was a terrific play, and he had the presence to turn after he stole the puck and put it under the crossbar on Thiessen. Just a great individual effort by Ewing,” Northeastern coach Greg Cronin said after the game.
“[That first line of Chris Higgins, Bryan Ewing, and Peter MacArthur] didn’t let us lose tonight,” Jack Parker said after the game. “I thought they played extremely well. I thought we played extremely well after we were down 2-0. We didn’t look too sharp early, but we looked good after that.”
The Terriers and Huskies traded chances throughout the rest of the game and the overtime, but both Bennett and Thiessen closed the door and didn’t give anyone a great scoring chance.
Northeastern (3-4-1, 3-3-1, their best Hockey East record after seven games since the 1997-98 season) travels to UNH next Friday then comes back to host Mass.-Lowell on Saturday. BU (2-5-2, 2-2-1) is at Vermont for a pair of games starting Friday night.
