The only Husky who showed up to play last night was Witt. He made some incredible saves. The first goal he let up looked a little soft, but honestly it's the first truly soft goal he's given up in awhile, and with the quantity of shots he's been seeing it was really just inevitable. Even with the soft goal allowed, he made a lot of really tough saves. The Huskies gave up a lot of odd-man rushes, including a 2-0, and Witt was up to the task each occasion.
The rest of the team simply didn't show up. Led by Roy, everyone looked like they were simply gliding around out there. Roy in particular was just coasting around even more than usual for him. Normally I would look at the low number of penalties (2, one of which wasn't actually a penatly--the play when the UMass player was injured) for NU and say it's a good thing, but I don't think this team is capable of getting fewer than 8 penalty minutes per game when they're playing hard. I think this low penalty mark is a good indicator of how unaggressive and disinterested the team was. UMass won all of the battles in the corners, mucked up the neutral zone, and really just outplayed the Huskies in all three zones. Mastalerz also had a very good game. He had one save in particular in the second period where he flashed his left pad to make a really good, athletic save.
The crowd size didn't help things either. The disinterest was very contagious between the fans and players it seemed. Small and very quiet crowd. This year's doghouse leadership has been very poor overall in my opinion.
I think Monday night is going to be very similar to the '09 beanpot final against bu--shorthanded goals galore. If gaudreau doesn't net a shorthanded goal Monday night I will be shocked.