BOSTON — For the first time since the 2008-09 season, there was playoff college hockey at Matthews Arena Friday night.
Unfortunately for the Northeastern faithful, it was a less than ideal outcome, with Merrimack surviving eight penalties to outlast the Huskies 3-2 in overtime to take a 1-0 series lead in the best-of-three first round of the Hockey East playoffs.
“They’re a tough team to play against,” said Northeastern coach Jim Madigan. “Very good goaltending, they pack it in really tight at the net, and they mug you and it’s tough to get any open space around their net.”
With the sixth-seeded Huskies (16-15-4) on the power play in overtime, Merrimack fourth-liner Kyle Singleton took a pass off a loose puck via a Matt Benning shot, raced down ice and beat goalie Clay Witt to give the Warriors the series edge.
“Gutsy performance by our guys,” Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy said. “Obviously, having to kill 10 penalty minutes in the first period put us a little behind the eight-ball.
“It’s what makes this job great, because you never have the same day twice.”
Merrimack netminder Rasmus Tirronen stepped up to the test, stopping 36 of the 38 shots he faced en route to the victory for the Warriors (15-16-4).
“Begins and ends with your goalie, and ‘Ras’ stood up to the test,” Dennehy added.
Just 58 seconds into the game, Hampus Gustafsson was ejected for hitting from behind, giving Northeastern a five-minute power play.
Merrimack took two more penalties in the first eight minutes of the game, but the first-ranked penalty kill in Hockey East (89.2%) killed off each one, much due to the aid of Tirronen between the pipes.
“As we were moving it around, we just couldn’t cleanly get it on a stick,” said Madigan. “When we got a scoring opportunity, we either shot it wide or bobbled it last second. We got to get more traffic in front of their goalie.”
After eventually killing off the Huskies’ power plays and getting on the man-advantage themselves courtesy of a Dax Lauwers cross-checking minor, Justin Hussar scored the first goal of the game to give the Warriors a 1-0 lead.
Hussar took a pass from Marc Biega and quickly put a wrist shot by Witt to draw first blood.
John Stevens had the best opportunity of the second period for Northeastern, attempting to sneak a wraparound past Tirronen, who was hugging the post and sticked the puck away.
With just 1:50 left to go in the middle frame, Jace Henning scored to open up a two-goal cushion for Merrimack. Jonathan Lashyn took a shot from the blue line that trickled off Henning’s stick and into the back of the net.
Northeastern would not go quietly, scoring two in the opening 10 minutes of the period to tie the game at two.
Zach Aston-Reese scored the first of the period, cutting Merrimack’s lead to within one. Skating four-on-four, Aston-Reese found a puck in the defensive zone, raced up ice along the right side and launched a missile over the blocker side of Tirronen.
Just over five minutes later, Mike McMurtry netted the equalizer, sending the crowd into a frenzy. On the power play, thanks to a Quinn Gould interference call, Kevin Roy put an off-angle shot on net from just inside the right half-wall. McMurtry, who was initially trying to screen Tirronen, poked away at the loose puck in front of the net and jammed it home.
“I like the way we came back and got two goals,” Madigan said. “I thought we stuck to our game plan pretty well.”
From there on out, the remainder of the third became a track meet, filled with odd-man rushes down ice, and huge saves by both Tirronen and Witt.
In the end, it was both goalies standing strong, sending the game into sudden death.
It did not look good for the Warriors early in overtime when John Gustafsson went off for tripping just 1:07 into the extra frame.
On the winner, Benning launched a shot from the blue line that hit the crossbar and rattled out. From there, Justin Mansfield fired a pass over to Singleton, who dashed up the right side and put the nail in the coffin for the Huskies.
“I was thinking pass originally to ‘Jards’ [Clayton Jardine], but that d-man went to one knee,” said Singleton. “I pump-faked a little and went short side. It felt good, that’s for sure.”
The two teams will meet again Saturday at 4 p.m. for Game 2 of the series.
“What I like most about it was we weren’t out of it mentally,” Dennehy said. “No matter what happened, we were upbeat on the bench and believed we were going to make it happen.”
