Re: Northeastern Huskies 2010-2011 Season Thread
The best Northeastern team ever was beaten by North Dakota in the Frozen Four. The second best was beaten by Merrimack (in a two games total goals series, not best two out of three).
They also played in the regular season that year, and MC won in overtime. That makes it Merrimack 2, Northeastern 1 for 1988, which is why I said two out of three instead of mentioning the two games, total-goals format, where MC lost the first game, but won the second and the series, plus a single regular season game.
As for 1982 vs 1988, I think it's a bit debatable. NU's 1988 team won the regular season and tournament championship in Hockey East, in a league where all the play was between the teams in the old ECAC East. In '82, all but one of the teams with winning percentages over .600 were future Hockey East teams-- all save Clarkson. I'd argue that Hockey East in 1988 was a tougher crown to win than ECAC in 1982. Add to that the Beanpot victory, and some of that team's individual players, like Heffernan and Racine, and I'd say that team was better.
As for the NCAA progress... well if the argument is about whether or not Merrimack beat the best NU team ever or the 2nd-best, but the difference between the two is how deep into the NCAAs the team got, and it was Merrimack that prevented NU from advancing, that's sort of a catch-22. It's also worth noting that the NCAA field in 1982 started with only eight teams; so NU advanced to the "frozen four" by winning one two-game, total-goals series over BGSU, and then lost a single-game semifinal to NoDak. The field in 1988 was twelve teams, with 8 teams competing in a first round, and the winners advancing to play four bye teams in the quarterfinals, which was also a two games, total goals format. You can still say that the '88 team fell short because they didn't win a series and so didn't go deep into the tourney, but by the same token, the '82 team's road to the frozen four was only one series that year.
I think if the '88 team played a best of three against the '82 team, the '88 team would win.
The best NU team ever played when Merrimack wasn't even in Hockey East and finished third in the nation after losing to eventual National Champion North Dakota.
That Merrimack was still Division II in 1982, and yet six years later, in 1988, had advanced to the point where they were able to get just as deep into the tourney as Northeastern had in 1982-- the Huskies won two games that year to advance in a single two-game, total-goals series, while the Warriors did that to NU in a larger field and then took one of two games in a two-game, total-goals series-- also against the eventual national champs-- says more about Merrimack that year than it does about Northeastern in '82. I think if it hadn't been for Merrimack that year, NU would likely have gotten just as deep into the tourney that year as they had in '82.
