No. 15/14 Northeastern Nips #4 Massachusetts Hockey, 3-1

BOSTON – No. 4 University of Massachusetts hockey made a third period push to rally from a two-goal deficit, but was unable to complete the comeback, dropping its Hockey East opener to No. 15/14 Northeastern on Tuesday night. The loss leaves the Minutemen at 1-1-0 (0-1-0 HEA), while the Huskies improve to 3-0-0 (1-0-0 HEA).

"Tonight was a grinding game other than the special teams and on our ice it's a more free-flowing game, you can hold onto the puck, you can make plays and on smaller ice you can't," said UMass head coach Greg Carvel. "I think we didn't handle that well, iced the puck too many times and got in bad situations because of icings, got guys caught out there tired. A lot of that, to me, is young kids making those decisions with the puck and things that they need to learn."

After an extended stretch where the Minutemen were unable to clear the puck from the defensive zone, Northeastern capitalized with Matt Demelis lifting a rebound over Matt Murray from John Picking and Matt Thompson to open the scoring at the 11:37 mark of the second period.

Northeastern then made it a 2-0 margin when Jordan Harris converted on a penalty shot attempt at 14:30 of the stanza.

At the 6:48 mark of the third period, UMass cut the Huskies' lead to 2-1. Freshman Jeremy Davidson dug the puck out along the wall and fed classmate Matthew Kessel at the blue line. Kessel ripped a shot that found the inside of the far post for his first collegiate tally.

A power-play chance followed shortly after the goal in which the Minutemen rifled off nine shots. Another man advantage opportunity came for UMass late after a five-minute major was called on Brendan vanReimsdyk, but the Minutemen were unable to solve Craig Pantano a second time.

Zach Solow added an empty net goal in the closing seconds to complete the scoring for Northeastern.

The Minutemen ended the night with a 35-23 shot advantage and were 0-for-7 on the power play, while the Huskies were 0-for-5. Pantano registered 34 saves and Murray totaled 20 stops for UMass.

The Minutemen will be back in action this Friday, Oct. 18, when the squad will open up a two-game set against Union at 7 p.m. at the Mullins Center.

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Team Stats

Matthew Kessel

Jeremy Davidson

John Leonard

Ty Farmer

Players Mentioned

Jeremy Davidson

Matthew Kessel

Matt Murray

Players Mentioned

Jeremy Davidson

Matthew Kessel

Matt Murray

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