Sunday, December 3, 2000

  1 2 3 OT Final
Northeastern 0 0 3 0 3
Maine 1 0 2 0 3

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The Huskies rebounded from their sub par effort on Friday night where they were embarrassed by the Black Bears and put forth a much better game against Maine in a game played at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine.  The Huskies saw Matt Keating return to action, but Scott Selig and Mike Ryan were not dressed for the game.  Willie Levesque scored in his second consecutive game, and Freshman Trevor Reschny scored two late goals to give NU a tie and gain one important point in the Hockey East standings.

The Huskies came out in the first period skating well and hitting.  Unfortunately they were hampered by almost eight minutes in penalties in the first half of the period, thanks in large part to a 5-minute major and game misconduct against Brian Sullivan at 3:09 for hitting from behind.  It was a horrible call by referee Gravalese who wanted to establish control early in the game.  The Maine player was up against the boards and already falling forward when Sullivan bumped him and finished doing the job that gravity started.  At most Gravalese could have called a minor for boarding or cross-checking.  The dogs gave up one goal during the major at 4:36 when Martin Kariya scored on Mike Gilhooly from Francis Nault and Niko Dimitrakos who punished NU with two goals Friday night.  But the Huskies stood their ground for half a minute during a five-on-three power play when John Peterman went out for interference at 7:40.  The Huskies outplayed the Black Bears in the second half of the period and only allowed Maine two shots on net.

There was no scoring in the second period, but the dogs definitely carried the play, out shooting the Black Bears 13-4.  Given a chance to skate even for most of the period, Gravalese called two penalties on each team one of which was a four-on-four, the Huskies attacked Maine Goalie Mike Morrison but came up short.

In the third period, Junior forward Willie Levesque tied the game at just 00:39 for his fifth goal of the season and his second in two games.  Levesque was assisted by Graig Mischler and Gilhooly during a four-on-four that carried over from the second period.  Things looked promising, and the NU fans spirits were high until 09:08 when Maine's Matthias Trattnig decided to be a hero and score an unassisted goal.  Just 17-seconds later at 09:25 Trattnig struck again from Tom Reimann and Kariya to give the Black Bears in blue uniforms a 3-1 lead.  Northeastern's shots were coming less regularly (only eight in the third period) and things were looking pretty grim.  A 3-1 loss at this point in the season after playing a game so well could have crushed their confidence for good.  This is when things got interesting.  At 16:06 Brian Cummings went out for slashing.  At 17:32 Maine's Cliff "Anyone know a good" Loya went out for the same.  Skating four-on-four at 17:52  Trevor Reschny scored his fourth of the season from Mike Jozefowicz and Joe Mastronardi.  Then, at 18:47 of the third period, with Gilhooly out for a sixth attacker Reschny tied the game with his fifth goal of the season from Chris Lynch and Jozefowicz.  Northeastern and Maine closed out the overtime period with no scoring.

Next up are the Boston College Eagles in a rare mid-week game Wednesday night at 7:00pm.  It will be the dogs' third game in six days.

Let's go Huskies!