Saturday

Saturday, December 9, 2000

  1 2 3 Final
Northeastern 1 0 2 3
Dartmouth 1 1 0 2

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Eric Ortlip scored two third period goals and Mike Gilhooly stopped 33 shots on net as the Northeastern Huskies traveled to toney Hanover, New Hampshire and beat the Dartmouth Big Green at Thompson Arena in front of 2459 spectators and alleged fans.  Northeastern ends a six game streak without a win and has now gone three games without a loss.  It was the dogs first win since beating Boston University 4-1 at Matthews Arena November 12.

Dartmouth started things out early when at 7:37 of the first period Mike Byrne beat Gilhooly (P.J. Martin, Brian Van Abel) to put the Big Green up 1-0.  The Huskies responded at 9:27 when Chris Lynch put a back-hander past Nick Boucher assisted from Graig Mischler.  Lynch had circled in front of the Dartmouth net and shoveled the shot past Boucher on a spin around move.

In the second period Dartmouth scored again to go up 2-1 when Gary Hunter (Pete Summerfelt, Jamie Herrington) beat Gilhooly at 17:50.  Northeastern was trying hard at this point, but the pace at which they had been playing games appeared to be catching up with them.  This game was the dogs' fourth in nine days, and the quasi-NHL schedule was taking its toll.

All that ended suddenly when freshman forward Eric Ortlip went to work on Boucher.  Ortlip struck quickly twice early in the third period, and NU was able to play with the lead.  At 4:12 of the period Ortlip received a pass from Sean MacDonald (Brian Sullivan) skating down the right wing.  Ortlip launched a quick wrist shot past a defenseman from about twenty feet over Boucher's right shoulder, and suddenly the game was tied.  Just seventeen seconds later (4:29) Ortlip received another pass from MacDonald (Mike Josefowicz) just in front of the Dartmouth net and put it past Boucher.  Boucher, who had played very well all night long stopping some very tough Husky shots, was unable to respond and the Huskies had the eventual game winning goal.  Dartmouth would pull Boucher for the sixth skater with 46 seconds remaining in the period, and there would be three face-offs in the Northeastern zone as the dogs were unable to clear the puck.  Evidence of just how jinxed the dogs have been in clearing the puck came with about 30-seconds left in the game; Rich Spiller had the puck on his stick 20 feet inside the NU zone and flipped the puck high into the air to clear it out, but the puck hit the scoreboard at mid ice some 50 feet in the air and the face-off came back inside the NU zone.

Chris Lynch won just about every face-off that he was on, and the NU defensive core again did a good job of clearing Gilhooly's rebounds to the corners.  Bruce Crowder, wearing a hideous black and white tie ensemble, seems to have settled on 'Hooly as the team's number one goaltender.  Once again, for the second time in three games, a freshman scored twice in the third period to save the dogs.  Trevor Reschny's third period heroics at Portland tied the dogs against Maine; now Ortlip came to the rescue.  So far NU freshman have been proving to be a very promising lot.  We here at the unofficial fan page would hope that Brian Tudrick is able to find a permanent spot on the roster; the recent departure of Ryan Zoller might  make that possible.

Next, the Huskies travel to lovely scenic Troy, New York which I am told is the vacation spot of the 21st century and the most wonderful place in the world for the RPI tournament.  The dogs play the RPI Engineers in game one at the Fieldhouse.

Let's go Huskies!