http://www.nunews.neu.edu/nu-news/Issues/030801/s4.html
Huskies headed to Orono to play Bears
By Mike Trocchi
News Staff
For seven seniors, the end of the regular season was a House of Horrors in
their final appearance at Matthews Arena. Northeastern dropped a 6-2 decision to
UMass-Lowell on Saturday after losing 6-3 to Boston College on Thursday.
NU (13-17-4, 7-13-4) heads into the Hockey East playoffs as the No. 7 seed and
will face Maine in a best-of-three quarterfinals series in Orono, Maine this
week.
"It's disappointing to go out like this," said senior Graig Mischler (10 goals
31 assists), who had a goal to extend his consecutive-points streak to 10 games.
"It's been an up-and-down four years."
Saturday night's game wasn't up-and-down because there was no flow to it. The
officiating crew of Tim Benedetto, Chuck Winters and Tom Fyre called 52
penalties for 179 minutes, a Hockey East record.
The worst damage was dealt to Northeastern, which lost Mike Ryan, called for
butt-ending at 6:57 and given a game disqualification. That means the Huskies
will be without their top goal scorer for the first playoff game.
"To make a call like that and to basically give a kid 120 penalty minutes is a
tough call," Northeastern coach Bruce Crowder said while biting his tongue as
hard as he could. "We can't verify it because we can't see it on the film."
Jim Fahey also tried to find the best spin on the situation. "I didn't think it
was [worthy of a game disqualification]," he said. "For [the official] to
decide, he's a big man, I guess."
While the refs took over the flow of the game, the Huskies didn't do too much to
grab it back.
UMass-Lowell (17-14-3, 10-11-3) will face New Hampshire in the playoffs,
continuing its miracle run up the conference standings. Since Crowder came to
Northeastern from Lowell five years ago, the Huskies have finished ahead of the
RiverHawks only once, compiling a 65-96-18 record.
Lowell dominated Saturday's game from the get-go. Ron Hainsey ripped a slap-shot
from the point past NU goalie Mike Gilhooly at 8:18 of the first.
The RiverHawks got two goals by Peter Hay to make it 3-0 at 7:02 of the second.
Northeastern's Graig Mischler continued a great season with a goal to make it
3-1 at 15:16 of the second.
But Lowell answered with three more unanswered goals. Stephen Slonina tapped a
weak shot past Gilhooly at 18:56 of the second period. Then senior Mike
Jozefowicz accidentally put one in his own net trying to bring the puck up ice
to make it 5-1 in favor of Lowell.
Hainsey added his second, a power-play goal, at 12:44 of the third period.
Senior Kevin Welch scored the last Matthews Arena goal of his career on a slick
backhander at 15:43 of the third.
Heading into the playoffs, the Huskies have lost seven of their last 10 games.
In the past three seasons, NU has improved in the regular season by only one win
each year and finished lower in the standings this year than last.
Crowder said he just wants to move past the regular season and Fahey agrees.
"It's gonna be a gut check to step up next week," he said. "It's up to us. It's
not up to the coaches. It's 5-on-5, one team against the other. If we pull
together and get back to the way we came into this year, I think our chances are
good."
Mischler left the building Saturday night, thinking back on four years of
memories. "I'm thankful for everything," he said. "The Surge! night was one of
my favorite nights. That was a great night. So was the win over Wisconsin [in
October.]"
From the Surge! 2-1 overtime win over Boston University in Jan. 1998, when 4,189
fans celebrated by throwing promotional soft drink bottles onto the ice in
celebration, to now, Mischler and the six other seniors (Jozefowicz, Welch, Matt
Keating, Sean McDonald, John Peterman and Brian Cummings) have been through a
lot.
"It's a little sad that I'll never play in front of these fans ever again," he
said.
