For a solid portion of Friday night, BU looked like a legitimately good team. But the thing is — the subletters at Walter Brown Arena are a seriously elite one.
No. 5 Northeastern, already the Hockey East regular-season champions, was ruthless with the chances it got, and it got quite a few in an 5-2 win at Walter Brown Arena. Tara Watchorn’s reeling Terriers got plenty themselves, a victory the third-year coach will surely want to celebrate, but they were ultimately outclassed in front of goal by a powerhouse that’s now won a staggering 19 of its 21 conference games this season.
And it wasn’t even the Huskies’ most dangerous goal-scorers that killed the Terriers. Neither Lily Shannon nor Stryker Zablocki nor Éloïse Caron, who make up NU’s electric top line and have a combined 98 points on the season, found the scoresheet until Zablocki’s empty-netter with less than a second to go. But that’s hardly a crisis for Dave Flint’s team, which got four sick goals — one each from junior Allie Lalonde and seniors Mia Langlois, Lily Brazis and Jules Constantinople — instead.
Lalonde and Brazis easily could’ve scored twice, but both failed to redirect perfect centering passes onto goal. They weren’t the only Huskies to squander Grade A chances. BU netminder Mari Pietersen made a few miracle saves to boot, but even the combination of those two things weren’t enough to keep NU from pouring in the goals.
NU (24-6-1, 19-1-1 HE) outshout its hosts, 31-21. That doesn’t look that bad for the Terriers, and truth be told, it wasn’t.
BU couldn’t defend the Huskies, clearly. But the Terriers (9-18-3, 7-12-2 HE) were a handful to defend themselves. BU generated plenty of high-danger chances, especially early, but NU goalie Renna Trembecky, in place of National Goalie of the Year semifinalist Lisa Jönsson, stood tall. Like they did in their Beanpot semifinal upset a month ago, the Terriers caused problems on the forecheck throughout the night.
The Huskies couldn’t afford to get comfortable. When they did midway through the second period, they committed a ghastly blue-line turnover, and BU senior Clara Yuhn made them pay with a filthy top-corner snipe on the ensuing breakaway. It was her first non-empty net goal since Nov. 21, and there was little Trembecky could do about it.
Late in the third, junior Neely Nicholson got a look from the wrist and fired an equally perfect snipe past Trembecky. Her fourth goal of the year rang the post as it pulled the Terriers within two.
They were the first goals for BU since their 3-1 victory over Merrimack nearly two weeks prior. Whereas the Terriers struggled to create anything dangerous against Vermont or Maine last weekend, they gave Trembecky plenty of work to do on Friday. BU’s chance production fell off significantly in the third period, and still, its 21 shots on goal were its most since Jan. 31.
That was a closer-than-it-should’ve-been 3-1 win against Merrimack, Hockey East’s worst team. This was an encouraging defeat to the league’s best, and while it remains inexplicable that BU has played well in each of its last two meetings with Northeastern, but has been mostly lifeless in the seven games against mediocre opponents in between, Watchorn was looking for progress heading into this split series with NU and No. 6 Connecticut.
She got it on Friday.
This story will be updated.