Wade MacLeod led his team with two goals as they shutout the University of Vermont Catamounts, 2-0, Saturday evening on home ice at Matthews Arena in front of a crowd of 1,409. The game marks the second two-goal outing for MacLeod on the season and leaves both teams with a weekend record of 1-1 against each other.
“Overall, I think we played a good game,” said McLeod. “Every point in Hockey East is huge and last night’s game left a little bit of a bitter taste in our mouths and we knew we had to come back today, and I think we did that.”
Neither team was able to score in the first period despite being awarded a power play apiece. The Huskies weren’t without their opportunities to score in the first period as they outshot the Catamounts 17-3.
The second period brought more physicality and penalties for both teams without any capitalization.
MacLeod’s first strike came at 8:50 into the third period when Tyler McNeely sent a sharp pass across the circles to find MacLeod inside the left circle. The puck found the back of Rob Madore’s net to make it a 1-0 game. Bitetto also picked up an assist on the play.
Looking to even the score, the Catamounts pulled Madore with less than a minute to play in the game. As Oleksiak and Silva brought the puck in the neutral zone, they fed the puck to MacLeod at the red dot, who launched it into an empty net.
While NU goalie Chris Rawlings picked up his second shutout of the season, he had plenty of help from his defense, which held the Catamounts to 17 shots as compared to the Huskies’ 40.
“I think any time you can limit any team in our league to 17 shots, you’ve played a good game defensively, so we’re happy,” said NU coach Greg Cronin. “I think it was more of a team effort on defense tonight as opposed to just the defense playing defense.”
Despite the loss, Madore recorded 71 saves over the course of the weekend against the Huskies. Last night, he had 33 saves in Vermont’s 3-1 win.
“Obviously, it was going to be a one-goal game and their [NU’s] power play executed when ours didn’t,” said Vermont coach Kevin Sneddon. “Madore had a great weekend and we felt bad we couldn’t produce some more offense for him tonight, because I thought he was our number one star.”
Northeastern will have three days off before their next game against Harvard on Wednesday, January 19 at 7 p.m at Matthews Arena. Vermont will play a home series against University of Massachusetts next weekend on Friday, January 21 and Saturday, January 22 in Burlington, Vt. Both games are scheduled for 7:05 p.m.
