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Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

Split-N

Split-N

All Hail
Well, we're only about 30 hours away from the official start of the new season, so that makes it about time to start a new season thread.

The hockey gods have been notoriously unkind to Northeastern throughout its long, un-storied history, including significant injuries to key players, outrageous penalty calls in championship and playoff overtimes, and any number of just plain freakish things that have combined to make the Huskies consistent underdogs.

But the program seems to have been undergoing strategic changes for the better over the past few years, including loading up the recruiting pipeline with more highly regarded recruits than at any time in the program's history. Those changes have started to bear fruit in terms of Husky alums making it in the NHL (Manson/Benning), producing a Hobey Baker finalist (ZAR), and not one but two current players (Gaudette/Sikura) who are expected to make deep runs for this year's Hobey. Add to that some promising underclassmen (Shea/Davies/Filipe), a freshman who last year was USHL scoring champ (Solow), a freshman goalie with pedigree (Primeau) and there's reason to believe the Hounds' bite finally may be worse than their bark.

Most pre-season prognosticators have NU pegged for a 4th or 5th place HEA finish. My personal prediction is 3rd, provided the injury bug stays away and the goaltending stabilizes. They certainly shouldn't have any problem scoring goals.

So at long last, a season that promises lots of good things to look forward to. (Oh, and let's do whatever it takes to appease those aforementioned hockey gods.)
 
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Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

For the pole dancers out there, NU starts the season ranked--

#13 in the USA Hockey/USA Today poll
#20 in the USCHO poll
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

northeastern said:
.. honest review & with SHU it is what it is. Still, my take.. always respect your competition, compete hard.
Click to expand...

Well put! Their coach, C.J. Marotolo, who toiled for four years on our JV team in the late '80s, probably sees a victory over NU in his dreams. He'll have his guys tuned up.

As it happens, C.J. brought in a fairly accomplished freshman class this fall. Funny thing about freshmen in their first game: Many are psyched out of their minds and play a hyperactive game. Having said that, I'll be very disappointed if we don't win both games, score a dozen goals and give up more than three this weekend.
 
Split-N said:
Well, we're only about 30 hours away from the official start of the new season, so that makes it about time to start a new season thread.

The hockey gods have been notoriously unkind to Northeastern throughout its long, un-storied history, including significant injuries to key players, outrageous penalty calls in championship and playoff overtimes, and any number of just plain freakish things that have combined to make the Huskies consistent underdogs.

But the program seems to have been undergoing strategic changes for the better over the past few years, including loading up the recruiting pipeline with more highly regarded recruits than at any time in the program's history. Those changes have started to bear fruit in terms of Husky alums making it in the NHL (Manson/Benning), producing a Hobey Baker finalist (ZAR), and not one but two current players (Gaudette/Sikura) who are expected to make deep runs..
Click to expand...

also Bitetto for Nashville, Vitale with Phoenix..(now Detroit?).. & Oleksiak with the Dallas Stars.. just some more off top of my head.
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

HHound said:
...I'll be very disappointed if we don't win both games, score a dozen goals and give up more than three this weekend.
Click to expand...

I think it's fair to say that one of the biggest challenges for this year's team will be playing up to expectations. A happy problem to have considering that there just haven't been many seasons where anyone has been able to even say something like this.
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

HHound said:
Having said that, I'll be very disappointed if we don't win both games, score a dozen goals and give up more than three this weekend.
Click to expand...

This should be similar to the early weekend against ASU last year, but certainly crazier things have happened. It's a nice progression in expected competition from SH to RIT to Quinnipiac before we have 7 league games against Lowell, BU, UVM and BC.
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

7 goals, I like that. Solow with 4 points, how'd he look overall? I only watched the first 15 minutes of the game. No let down tomorrow
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

Tilldog40 said:
I would have pulled Ruck after that 3rd goal.
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I wouldn't go that far only because I thought defensive zone play in front of Ruck was, for the most part, atrocious. (I've been making the same comment for the past three years.) Looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Primeau tomorrow night. On a more positive note, the play of Filipe, Solow, Griffin, Josefek, and Goldstein was encouraging. Opponents will cover Gaudette and Sikura like cheap carpeting unless there are other scoring threats on other lines that need to be dealt with.

Speaking of Josefek, I have to wonder how many close losses might have been close wins if Josefek (not to mention the Stevens Bros.) didn't miss so many games last season because of injury.
 
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Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

This was my 34th home opener and it seemed more like a scrimmage at times. Positives NU could do basically whatever they wanted to in the offensive zone and could cycle long enough for you to boil H20 at times. The bad, frequent lapses on D and some marginal play from RR. He will need to focus much more against the metal of the league. That said, after 2 years of slow starts I can't feel that a 2 win start is a bad thing. However I think SH has been ranked among the worst teams in collage hockey in the polls for quite a few years and whatever info they may have received from Mr. Cotton on the Huskies it didn't help them tonight at all. We could have scored 10 goals.

I will take it but they will need to improve a lot if they are going to play the Bobcats in a couple of weeks and take at least one W. Also ,on the bad side my gal pals bag got nabbed from the Uno's after the game so that was a bit of a bummer. I don't have any more tix until the BU games. Also note worthy the easy parking at Columbus St lot is gone and is moved to the regular garage (still free but it will be a cold walk in a few weeks) as NU constructs a playground and turf field in a partnership with the city, which is a good thing!

Cheers!
 
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RossiRules said:
Me too...
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Ruck, def shaky in those last 2. Looks like needs some polishing from the summer.. Also sloppy PK on our part in the 3rd. Coasting at 6-1.. let them back in at 6-3.. only to take the reins back a bit at the end.

Someone asked re Solow.. he works hard.. grinder type. Finishes his hits. His slapshot to put us up 7-3 was a bomb. No let up tomorrow. Go NU
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

I don’t want to negative but nobody checked tonight. Couple times players could have made real hard clean hits and didn’t. It’s great having skill guys but we don’t really have any bangers. Lerario is fiesta but not an effective checker. Hockey East has some teams that will knock you around. I hope this team is tough.
 
Re: Northeastern Huskies 2017-18: Every Dog Has its Day

A win is good. A win by multiple goals where we were the clear better team is good. A win where we were the better team and there was never any doubt is good. Tonight is a net positive.

The good:
- Solow is legit. Adept passer, that slapshot was a bomb, immediately PP time, defensively responsible, plays hard and physical. Gonna be a fan favorite and a producer.
- Secondary scoring came alive and may be a sign of things to come. Jozefek looked great, continuing his great play from last week. Filipe was solid, a good power forward game. Sometimes a little too fancy. Hopefully this goal and time with Filipe sparks Griffin a bit.
- The defense was engaging down low in the offensive zone, helping to continue the cycle, drive the puck in the middle, and they also activated quite a bit through the neutral zone to push the play up. Saw it with the usual suspects (Davies, Cockerill, sometimes Williams), but Trevor Owens looked faster than last year and quite active running the transition offense. His feed to Filipe for 17's second game was lovely.
- Huskies won 58% of faceoffs, 37 of 63 draws. Big improvement from last year's overall numbers. Gaudette was 11/20, Solow was 15/22, and Stevens was 5/7. Filipe took the draw for his line it seemed, and was 2/6.

The bad:
- They seemed to lose interest/steam/that killer instinct after the first period, leading to a big SHU push in the second that Ruck stymied and then two bad penalties and goals against in the third. I hope Madigan beats into them that there are no guarantees and that they need to play a complete 60 minutes.
- Too many fancy passes, drop passes, extra passes, behind-the-back-for-the-highlight-reel passes. Need to be crisper and more accurate.
- Ruck. Once again, a game where he saves under 90% of shots (19/22, 86.4%). I thought he looked very solid in the first two periods, good positioning, rebound control, and lateral movement when he needed it. That third period killed my confidence in him. Neither of those powerplay goals should be let in, especially the first one.
- Penalty kill. 3/5 against a PP that was <10% last year isn't good at all.

Hope Primeau starts tomorrow. Wouldn't be surprised to see some lines shakeup but mostly consistency would be nice.
 
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