The No. 3 Northeastern men’s hockey team suffered a setback when it lost to the UMass Minutemen 6-4 at the Mullins Center in Amherst Friday night.
‘They used their game plan very well and they counter attacked extremely well,” head coach Greg Cronin said. ‘They deserved to win the game.’
The Minutemen came right out of the gate and scored a quick goal to take an early lead just 1:16 into the game. The goal was scored by forward Alex Berry who went top shelf to beat junior goaltender Brad Thiessen.
UMass pushed its lead to 2-0 halfway through the first period on a goal by forward Casey Wellman.
The score stayed that way until the first minute of the second period when senior forward Ryan Ginand put the Huskies on the board with his 16th goal of the season.
The goal came on the power play when senior captain Joe Vitale passed the puck to Ginand in the center and Ginand shot it past UMass goaltender Paul Dainton.
However, NU could not complete the comeback and the Minutemen extended their lead to 3-1 at 7:22 of the second period on a goal by Cory Quirk.
Later in the second period, the Huskies had a big chance with a 5 on 3 power play opportunity after two penalties to UMass. After some hard work and good puck movement, they were unable to take advantage of the chance and the scored stayed 3-1 going into the third period.
In the final frame, the game became more physical and intense as the Huskies tried to battle their way back into it.
UMass scored twice more in the first half of the period and opened up their lead to 5-1.
‘Our penalty killing, which has been terrific all year, made some bad decisions with the puck,’ Cronin said.
Ginand scored his second goal of the game at 15:27 to cut it to 5-2. This time it was sophomore forward Wade MacLeod and junior forward Steve Silva who had the assists on the goal.
Just 30 seconds later, UMass forward Chris Davis scored to make it 6-2 Minutemen and the Huskies were back down by four.
Less than a minute after Davis scored, senior Rob Rassey scored to make it 6-3 at 16:54. It was Rassey’s fourth goal in six games. Getting assists for the Huskies on the goal were freshman forward Mike McLaughlin and senior defenseman Louis Liotti.
The Huskies would finish off the scoring with less than a minute left when MacLeod put the puck past Dainton but the Huskies couldn’t muster anything else and the game finished with UMass in front 6-4.
Northeastern went three-for-eight on the power play, scoring for the sixth game in a row with a man advantage.
‘I thought that we played hard and they played hard but the difference was UMass played smart,’ Cronin said.
With the loss, the Huskies record drops to 17-6-2 overall on the season. They still retain their first place standing in Hockey East by two points with a 13-4-1 record.
UMass improves to 11-11-3 overall and 6-7-3 in Hockey East.
The Huskies will next play in the first round of the Beanpot against the Boston College Eagles at 8 p.m. at the TD Banknorth Garden.