Florence Schelling, who 51 weeks to this date made a hasty transatlantic flight from Germany just to go on crease duty for Frozen Fenway, is again hanging around to monitor Northeastern’s cage this weekend before she zooms out to her home country in time for Tuesday’s 2011 MLP Cup opener.
Granted, the Swiss Save-ior is more indebted to her native international program than most any other player. Odds are she would not be bolstering any U.S. college program had she not that delicate balance of a European pond small enough to jut from, but tough enough that its waters prepared her for the torrents of North American hockey.
But here she is now, bolstering the Huskies’ steady ascendency that has them just on the outer brim of contention for a potential at-large NCAA tournament passport. Not much sense in cutting the program’s foundational figure loose on a working holiday when one doesn’t have to right away, especially with a few outstanding seams left to seal.
Northeastern will ring in 2011 with a New Year’s Day noontime bout with Wisconsin at the Easton Holiday Showcase in St. Cloud, Minn. With the lowly host team –namely the 0-16-1 St. Cloud State- on tap for Sunday, and a pure Hockey East slate thereafter save for Harvard in the Beanpot semifinals, Saturday is the Huskies’ last chance to hunt the kind of big game head coach Dave Flint has rightly craved.
Ranked No. 10 in most national polls, including the revered PairWise leaderboard, Northeastern can still boost its resume if it whittles anything off of Boston College or Boston University, whom it will encounter a combined five more times. But the prospect of pestering the Badgers, who are 16-2-0 and stand at the pinnacle of the PairWise list, is uniquely vital on two fronts.
First, it can go unsaid that one’s interleague transcript sets the tone for the PairWise derby. And so far, of all the teams that still might not need to resort to the hardly fail-safe automatic bid, the only one the Huskies have encountered is Quinnipiac. That game, back on Oct. 9, happened to be a 4-0 falter, the team’s most lopsided loss so far this season.
Second, NU is pulling its game schedule out of the cooler after a 25-day freeze. Unless they deliberately sustained some residual vinegar from their pre-break 3-0 loss at BU in hopes of converting negative energy, momentum should be irrelevant.
If they can extract something tangible from this second-half icebreaker, even if it’s just a valiant losing effort that wins a few extra votes at the next poll revision, the Huskies will have what they need. That is, an encouraging barometer to carry them through the final 15 games of their regular season.
“It will be good for us to see how we measure up with the best,” said Flint. “We are not where I want us to be, but it is a process, and I feel we have made some great strides since I took over the program.
“We still have a ways to go before I will be happy with where we’re at. It will be a good chance to see where we are, though.”
With his team currently subsisting on a 10-4-4 overall record, Flint is on a comfortable pace for his first winning season in two tries. After a 12-20-3 finish to his first campaign in 2008-09, a sweet-then-sour run that saw the unripe Huskies skate out of their skins in the homestretch after 10-8-2 start, he took a year’s leave to serve as Wisconsin skipper Mark Johnson’s sidekick behind the U.S. Olympic bench.
Back in the Hub, assistants Linda Lundigran and Lauren McAuliffe oversaw a 17-9-7 run, but one that again saw an epic fizzle in February. Once 16-5-3 overall, the 2009-10 Huskies finished on a 1-4-4 nosedive en route to a Hockey East quarterfinal home loss to Connecticut.
Naturally, for this year, Flint’s customized definition of success means getting off the .500 fence in the conference standings, where his pupils are tied for third at 3-3-3, and then paying the program’s first visit to the semifinals since 2004.
For that to happen, the Huskies will not only need Schelling –who is 9-4-4 with a .933 save percentage and 1.78 goals-against average- and a stable of puckslinging pups to duplicate their first half, but also must issue a wakeup call to a mysteriously lagging senior class. Kristi Kehoe, Lori Antflick, and Alyssa Wohlfeiler all have yet to crack double-digits under the points heading and have inserted an aggregate eight goals over the first 18 games. Hardly expected when the three came into the year sharing credit for 71 strikes over their first three seasons.
The prescribed perk-up could start with a simple, certifiably Cyclopean effort against the Badgers, who at this rate are the single-best hope of retaining the WCHA’s decade-long dynasty.
Flint meticulously safeguarded the specifics, but expressed a keen desire to show Johnson what he has picked up from their year together.
“I took a lot from my experience with Mark last year,” he said. “I tried to be a sponge when I was around him and learn all that I could. He has a wealth of hockey knowledge and I would have been a fool if I didn’t try to learn as much as I could from him. I stole a few drills from him as well.”
For the foreman, no less than it is for his pupils, the time is now to apply what he has fostered.
Theoretically, the Huskies have little, if anything, to lose in Saturday’s matchup. But by their enhanced standards and aspirations, there is too much opportunity for them to pass up.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond the Dashers
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