Northeastern got four goals from the unlikeliest of sources to defeat Boston University, 4-1 Sunday.\u00a0 Graig Mischler, who led the team in assists but hadn’t scored all year, netted two for the first time in his collegiate career.\u00a0 Sean MacDonald added another to break a 51-game drought.\u00a0 And Chris Lynch got his first five-on-five goal in over a year.\u00a0 For good measure, defenseman Joe Mancuso totaled three assists, one more than he’d accumulated in his 43-game career.
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\nThe Huskies fell behind 1-0 in the first period, but rebounded to dominate in the second and take a lead they would never surrender.\u00a0 Jason Braun played well in the nets, weathering an early third-period BU storm before Mischler’s second and Lynch’s goal provided a safe cushion.
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\nAs a result, the Huskies, who have played one of the toughest schedules to date in the country, move to 5-2-1 with a 2-1-1 mark in Hockey East. This was their only game of the weekend.
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\n“For us, that was a great game,” said NU coach Bruce Crowder.\u00a0 “BU is a very good team.\u00a0 We were just a little bit better tonight.\u00a0 We had some guys who were equal to the task.\u00a0
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\n“The kids want to make some waves this year.\u00a0 We don’t want to get too high or too low.\u00a0 We realize that it’s only November and it’s only one game tonight.\u00a0 But at the same time, we’re going to enjoy the win.\u00a0 We just want to keep things rolling.”
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\nThe news for Boston University was more grim.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Combined with a disheartening 4-2 loss to UMass-Lowell on Friday night, the Terriers have now fallen to 2-4-1 with a 1-3-1 league record.\u00a0
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\nBU coach Jack Parker, however, is a long way from pushing the panic button.\u00a0 In fact, he wasn’t all that displeased with his team’s performance.
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\n“When you lose 4-1, you think you’d be unhappy, but I was pretty happy character-wise in how hard we played,” he said.\u00a0 “There’s the old saying of two out of three a’int bad.\u00a0 I thought we played great in the first.\u00a0 I thought we played real hard and real smart in the third except for a couple mistakes. …\u00a0 I was real disappointed that we seemed to revert to the way we played against Lowell in the second period.
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\n“[But Northeastern] is a good team.\u00a0 They’re going to win a lot of hockey games.”
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\nBU played the first period as though determined to rebound from their Friday night loss, outshooting Northeastern, 13-4, while taking a 1-0 lead.
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\nThe Terriers drew first blood at 4:06 on the man advantage, although arguably it had more to do with a great individual play by Dan Cavanaugh than the typical man-up puck movement.\u00a0 Cavanaugh carried the puck over the blue line on the right wing and faked defenseman Rich Spiller into the cheap seats.\u00a0 Cutting across Spiller’s body to the inside instead of the expected outside move along the boards, Cavanaugh broke in on NU netminder Jason Braun, forced him to protect the short side and slid the puck to Mike Pandolfo on the far post, where the winger put it into the empty net.
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\nAt 12:24 it appeared that Northeastern had capped some excellent puck movement on a power play of its own with a Mike Ryan goal.\u00a0 A fraction of a second earlier, however, referee Jim Fitzgerald had whistled the play dead because of a crease violation and the apparent goal was nullified.
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\nNortheastern roared back in the second, dominating play en route to a 2-1 lead.\u00a0 As would be the case all game, both goals ironically came off Husky sticks that had been remarkably cold.
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\nJust 2:15 into the period, sniper Mike Ryan put a shot on Jason Tapp that fell at the goaltender’s feet.\u00a0 As the puck trickled toward the goal line, Mischler whacked it into the net.\u00a0 Although Mischler entered the game with a team-high nine assists, the goal was the top-line center’s first of the season.
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\nNortheastern continued to press and at the 6:40 mark Tapp had to make a sharp save on a Brian Cummings tip in front.\u00a0 Northeastern then went on the power play, but a partial break by Jack Baker on the shorthanded attempt resulted in a Husky penalty to even the sides.
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\nAt the midway point, Lynch cut through the BU defense, but as he cut across the goalmouth, he couldn’t control the puck enough to backhand it in.
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\nThe decisive territorial advantage finally turned into a lead for Northeastern at 11:00.\u00a0 Willie Levesque picked off a pass at center ice, broke in on the left wing, stopped on a dime.\u00a0 His shot was blocked, but Sean MacDonald put it in from the doorstep.\u00a0 The goal broke a 51-game scoring drought for the senior dating back to Nov. 13, 1998.
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\n“It’s a relief and it’s exciting, too,” he said.\u00a0 “It’s nice to contribute offensively to the team’s cause.”
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\nBU got the next two power plays and almost cashed in on the later one, which extended into the third period.\u00a0 Just as the penalty expired, Greg Johnson hit the post on the rebound.
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\nThe Terriers continued to apply pressure, but rarely got more than a first shot as the Northeastern defense cleared the best rebound opportunities.\u00a0 And when push came to shove, Braun made the big save.
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\nNone was bigger than Cavanaugh sending Pandolfo in at 7:30, attempting to reprise their first-period goal.\u00a0 However, Braun made the huge save.
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\nUntil Northeastern reasserted itself at 12:30, it looked like only a matter of time before BU converted its territorial domination into a tie game.\u00a0 Ryan Dudgeon set up Lynch for Northeastern’s best chance of the period and within a minute the Huskies had not only stemmed the tide, but added an important insurance goal.
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\nMike Jozefowicz shot from the point and while Scott Selig wreaked havoc in front, Mischler stuffed in his second “garbage” goal of the game.
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\n“They weren’t the prettiest goals I’ve ever scored,” he said.\u00a0 “They just came from hard work.\u00a0 I’ve got two guys on my line [Selig and Ryan] who work their butts off.\u00a0 Tonight I was just getting the bounces.”
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\nLynch, who ironically had a hat trick earlier this year but still was without a five-on-five goal, ended that streak, too, at 15:38.\u00a0 One of the top faceoff men in the league, he won two draws cleanly back to the point for shots which Tapp saved.\u00a0 On a third straight faceoff win,\u00a0 he got the puck back to Mancuso, who shot and Lynch put in the rebound.
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\nFrom that point it was just a matter of Braun and the Northeastern defense holding the fort while time ran out.\u00a0 The junior netminder finished with 34 saves on 35 BU shots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northeastern got four goals from the unlikeliest of sources to defeat Boston University, 4-1 Sunday.\u00a0 Graig Mischler, who led the team in assists but hadn’t scored all year, netted two for the first time in his collegiate career.\u00a0 Sean MacDonald added another to break a 51-game drought.\u00a0 And Chris Lynch got his first five-on-five goal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}