Hockey East report: Week of February 15

Backcheck
To borrow a common Monty Python catchphrase, Boston University is not completely dead.

By seizing four of the five points awarded in their home-and-home set with a suddenly slipping-and-sliding Northeastern team last weekend, the Terriers have suddenly drawn a 22-22 knot in the point column with their Hub neighbors. That’s good enough for a tie for fourth place in Hockey East and a mere two strokes shy of a claim to first.

Translation: there is still a fair chance we could all end up venturing to Walter Brown Arena for the 2010 conference championship. Jenelle Kohanchuk or no Jenelle Kohanchuk, BU could still get this done.

Granted, given all of the congested circumstances, it would require a flawless upshot on their part this weekend against Maine combined with a lot of assistance from Father Fate. But if they make it happen and subsequently make enough ripples in the conference tournament, then the Terriers may also put themselves in a decent position to snag an NCAA passport –something that looked like an encouraging prospect at the start of the season only to start fading circa December.

The way the two Beantown dog packs are going right now, this may also mean keeping a Big Four of reckonable contenders for the pennant, only with the Terriers –now unbeaten (0-2-3) in their last five games- succeeding the Huskies.

Northeastern is technically winless in its last six outings (0-3-3), including four league contests, unless you count a shootout win over BU on January 26. In five of those games, celestial junior stopper Leah Sulyma has authorized no more than two goals, yet her skating mates have likewise failed to tune the opposing mesh more than twice.

Perhaps most frightfully, in their last three league contests, the Huskies have drawn first blood, but failed to cement a W.

There is also a sudden cause for concern in the way of Northeastern’s depth. They were initially showing plenty of diverse productivity for most of this ride, but are now symptomatic of frostbite and fatigue induced by the shortage of experience (six rookies, two sophomores) within their strike force.

Case in point: of the four goals the Huskies have mustered in their last 245 minutes of overall clock time, three have been scored by senior Lindsey Berman, the other by rookie linemate Brittany Esposito.

***
If first-place Providence needed a wake-up call just before the final sprint to the conclusion of the playoff race, they have received it in the form of Connecticut and New Hampshire hopping assertively onto their laps when they fell asleep at the throne.

Less than 24 hours after a home shootout triumph nudged PC to a two-point edge over UConn, the seething Huskies –but chiefly Monique Weber- were quick to turn around and bump the Friars into unchartered territory Saturday. Weber’s two first period goals amounted to the first multi-point deficit PC has faced since a 4-1 loss to Wisconsin two nights after Thanksgiving. As it happened, they would endure a statistically identical 4-1 defeat at Freitas Ice Forum, just their third regulation loss this calendar year.

The Huskies, who in that same post-Thanksgiving time frame are now a searing 14-2-3, couldn’t even be beat when they pushed their luck on a 3-0 lead by taking three unanswered penalties, including a five-minute hitting-from-behind infraction against Sami Eveleyn with still a chunky 15:22 left on the clock. The Friars, former owners of the league’s second-hottest power play brigade, would scrape out nothing beyond one Jean O’Neill goal during the five-minute all-you-can-score buffet.

Meanwhile, Connecticut aggregated a comparatively towering seven goals over two weekend games, thereby upping their nightly median from 2.67 to 2.72. And with her second period strike on Saturday, top gun Michelle Binning (18) now trails no one but Allie Thunstrom (20) on the league’s goal-scoring charts. Fellow senior Cristin Allen, who assisted on both of Weber’s tallies, is a comfy No. 3 on the assists’ leaderboard (20), and is the top defensive point-getter (23) among all Hockey Easterners.

***
Boston College won the anti-staring contest against host Maine on Friday, simultaneously splashing an unimaginable 13-game winless streak (0-9-4) and fastening their ticket to the postseason. Accordingly, the loss –their seventh in as many league games since New Year’s- raked the blunderstruck Black Bears out of playoff contention yet again.

BC was piloted to a not-so-easy 3-2 triumph by its top line of Thunstrom, Kristina Brown, and Ashley Motherwell, all of whom nabbed two points Friday. The following afternoon, as part of a 4-1 knockout, second-line sophomore center Mary Restuccia discharged eight shots on net and turned in a 2-1-3 transcript for just her third multi-point game of the season. (Those were a little more commonplace in Restuccia’s rookie year, when she charged up eight multi-point performances in 36 appearances.)

As hard as it is to envision the shriveled Eagles finishing any higher than their current perch in sixth place, never mind advancing beyond the Hockey East preliminary round, they have at least uncovered a genuine token of dignity before the dusk of their turbulent 2009-10 campaign.

***
Like in Maine, spring cleaning shall again come at its usual time –namely, after the final buzzer of Game 34- to the women’s wing of Gutterson Fieldhouse. Although their valiance was momentarily rewarded, ultimately cheating their imminent demise for a good two weeks, the Vermont Catamounts drowned in Lake Whittemore over the weekend by a combined two-game score of 8-2.

Ten nights removed from a soul-scraping 2-1 falter at Gutterson, the resurgent New Hampshire program perked up after conceding a 1-0 lead and taking a toe-curling five penalties in Saturday’s first period. The latter 40 minutes were little more than an old-fashioned tussle between the WHEA’s Pittsburgh Penguins and Toronto Maple Leafs.

Within both the second and third period on Saturday, the Wildcats broke 10 under the SOG heading while curbing the Catamounts well below that boundary. A power play goal via Kelly Paton drew a 1-1 knot at 6:23 of the second, and by 9:46, that knot was snapped courtesy of Julie Allen.

Micaela Long achieved a rapid playmaker hat trick when her feed to Paton ultimately morphed into a Shannon Sisk goal at 12:44, nine seconds after the Wildcats had finished a key penalty kill. Long would toss in one more specialty helper with 1:39 to spare in the third, feeding Paton for an insurance strike that cemented a 4-2 upshot.

Sunday: more of the same. Goaltender Lindsey Minton –starter and winner of her team’s last three ventures and owner of the league’s best individual winning percentage (.733)- handed Vermont its 10th shutout loss of the season and eight of her skating mates appeared on the scoresheet in a 4-0 decision.

The shutout was the Wildcats’ first since Kayley Herman blanked BC by the same 4-0 score on December 8. It was also the team’s largest margin of victory since that excursion to BC and it extended their active winning streak to three games, their longest since Frozen Fenway.

Not to mention, it pulled them even for at least a partial claim to the top seed in the conference. Now that’s New Hampshire normalcy.

Weekly scoreboard

Tuesday, February 9
Boston College 1, Boston University 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_bu_1.f09
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/020910aaa.html
http://www.goterriers.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/020910aaa.html 

Harvard 1, Northeastern 0
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wharnoe1.f09 

Friday, February 12
Boston College 3, Maine 2
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_mne1.f12
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021210aaa.html
http://goblackbears.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021210aaa.html 

Providence 4, Connecticut 3 (SO)
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wconprv1.f12
http://www.uconnhuskies.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aaa.html
http://www.friars.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021210aaa.html 

Saturday, February 13
Boston College 4, Maine 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_mne1.f13
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aaa.html
http://goblackbears.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aaa.html 

New Hampshire 4, Vermont 2
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wunhver1.f13
http://www.unhwildcats.com/sports/wice/2009-10/releases/201002131ellap
http://www.uvm.edu/~sportspr/womens_hockey/?Page=News&storyID=16029 

Boston University 3, Northeastern 2 (SO)
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbu_noe1.f13
http://www.goterriers.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aaa.html
http://gonu.com/whockey/2010/wh10-29.shtml

Connecticut 4, Providence 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wconprv1.f13
http://www.uconnhuskies.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aad.html
http://www.friars.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021310aaa.html 

Sunday, February 14
New Hampshire 4, Vermont 0
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wunhver1.f14
http://www.unhwildcats.com/sports/wice/2009-10/releases/20100214yvkrsi
http://www.uvm.edu/~sportspr/womens_hockey/?Page=News&storyID=16034 

Boston University 2, Northeastern 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbu_noe1.f14
http://www.goterriers.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/021410aaa.html
http://gonu.com/whockey/2010/wh10-30.shtml 

Upcoming schedule
Friday, February 19
Providence at Vermont, 7:00 pm

Saturday, February 20
Northeastern at Connecticut, 1:00 pm
Boston College at New Hampshire, 2:00 pm
Maine at Boston University, 3:00 pm
Providence at Vermont, 4:00 pm

Sunday, February 21
Connecticut at Northeastern, 1:00 pm
Maine at Boston University, 3:00 pm

New Hampshire at Boston College, 7:00 pm