BOSTON ― Seconds, anyone?
Northeastern successfully defended its Beanpot championship and captured its fifth title in the last six tournaments on the strength of a 4-3 overtime victory over No. 3 Boston University on Monday night at TD Garden.
For the second consecutive week, senior captain Justin Hryckowian set up classmate Gunnarwolfe Fontaine (East Greenwich, R.I.) for a game-winning goal in the extra session. Fontaine earned Most Valuable Player honors for the tournament, having dished out two assists before scoring the deciding goal with 28.6 seconds remaining in overtime.
The Huskies also got stellar goaltending from Cameron Whitehead, who was called upon to make six of his 33 stops in just the extra frame alone. The freshman had a .915 save percentage (54 saves on 59 shots) over the two games, starting with last week’s 3-2 overtime win over Harvard.
Gunnar getting hot
The Huskies had to overcome three different one-goal deficits en route to the win, but was there any doubt who would come through in the end?
Fontaine continued his epic career on the Beanpot stage when the moment was biggest, netting the deciding goal over BU goaltender Mathieu Caron’s glove side after Hryckowian made a second effort to retrieve the puck and dish a drop pass back to the left circle.
“He seems to really get going at this time of the year,” Northeastern coach Jerry Keefe said. “He’s been heating up lately, and not just in the Beanpot. He’s been playing his best hockey. … As a coach, you can see it every day down the rink, right? You can tell when guys are in a good spot because they’ve got a smile on their face and they work hard in practice. … He’s shown in these games, obviously.”
Keefe is right. Fontaine now has five goals and three assists over six career Beanpot games, including his winner a week ago and two goals in last February’s championship win over Harvard. Three of the former Lawrence Academy standout’s tournament games have featured multiple points.
“I don’t look too much into it,” Fontaine said of his Beanpot success. “It’s just another game, but obviously those were just two great plays from Hyrckowian on those back-to-back overtime goals, so I owe a lot to him.”
Fontaine has netted four of his seven goals since the calendar flipped from 2023 and is riding a six-game point streak. Talk about peaking at the right time.
Overcoming, in more ways than one
In some ways, the game was a microcosm of Northeastern’s season.
The Huskies, who started 2-7-1 but have now won six straight games, bounced back from multiple quick strikes that ended up past Whitehead.
BU star freshman Macklin Celebrini opened the scoring — tying for the national lead with his 23rd goal — at 14:41 of the first period, taking advantage of Northeastern graduate defenseman Pito Walton’s turnover in the slot that turned into essentially a 2-on-0.
Senior Matt DeMelis (Hingham, Mass.) scored just his second of the season at 5:52 into the second to bring the Huskies even, but they surrendered again at 9:11 as BU sophomore Devin Kaplan had his centering pass deflected in off the stick of stalwart Northeastern blueliner Hunter McDonald.
Though BU led by just one goal, it had a dominant territorial edge that read 23-8 in shots through two periods. However, two of Northeastern’s first six shots beat Caron.
The teams were tied 2-2 as the second period winded down before BU sophomore defenseman Lane Hutson scored five-hole with just 7.2 seconds left.
“Really disappointed with the end result. Taking nothing away from them, they kept fighting. But I thought we were the better team for a majority of the game,” BU coach Jay Pandolfo said. “I thought we controlled possession and had better scoring chances, but we ended up on the wrong side of it.”
Whitehead had much to do with that fact. He finished his third 30-save effort of the win streak with several key stops in overtime, including denying Hutson on a cut to the inside and then a pad stop on senior Luke Tuch in the final minute.
In the end, the Huskies counted upon their leaders as well. All four goal scorers — DeMelis, Hryckowian, sophomore Jack Williams (Biddeford, Maine) and Fontaine — wear letters on their jerseys. Williams made Northeastern’s only power-play opportunity and shot count, scoring the game-tying goal at 9:51 of the third for his team-leading 15th goal.
“You need your best players, your leaders, to show up in these big games. That’s exactly what they did tonight,” Keefe said. “You’ve got to give that leadership group a lot of credit because they did not sway one ounce all year. They believed in each other and just kept focusing on getting better every single day.”
Building off, moving past
Succeeding on the big stage can be used as a continued springboard down the home stretch. And so, too, can coming up just short.
The victorious Huskies find themselves within three points of sixth place in Hockey East and actually slot in 20th in the NCAA Tournament PairWise Rankings. It opens up an avenue into the postseason, which was likely an afterthought through the early struggles. Three wins over the two Commonwealth Avenue schools — beginning with BC in December — have helped that standing.
“Things were a little tougher on our end to start the year, but we kept receipts at the beginning of the year, we heard all the noise and we stuck together through it,” Hryckowian said. “We’re a resilient group now and we’re kind of gelling at the right time.”
On BU’s side, all signs point to plenty of big games ahead in the coming weeks. Last year’s Beanpot setbacks turned around, with a Hockey East title and Frozen Four berth in March and April.
Pandolfo hopes that losing four of the past seven games — three in a row to BC and Northeastern before a three-game win streak entering Monday — is nothing more than a bump in the road.
“I’m sure our guys felt like we should have won that game, but we have to move past it,” said Pandolfo, who questioned the third-period penalty call on freshman defenseman Gavin McCarthy that led to the tying goal. “It’s a learning experience that we have to learn from and grow from. … We have a mature group. These guys, they’ll bounce back.”
In the opener
Earlier in the night, top-ranked Boston College easily handled Harvard, 5-0, to clinch a third-place Beanpot finish for the second consecutive year. Star freshman Ryan Leonard (Amherst, Mass.) had a goal and two assists, while Jan Korec made 10 of his 19 saves in the third period for a shutout in his first collegiate start.
