Friday, November 24, 2000

  1 2 3 F
St. Cloud State 0 2 2 4
Northeastern 1 0 0 1

The official attendance for the first ever meeting between Northeastern and Saint Cloud State University was listed at 2031.  That would be more believable if they said that they were including all the event staff, players, building crew, and people who walked by the area earlier in the day because Matthews seemed like a very lonely place.  The Huskies won this game; the SCSU Huskies, that is.  Northeastern has now dropped three games in a row, but even worse they are not looking very good.

In the first period, Joe Mastronardi had a breakaway one-on-one with Meyer, but he shot the puck wide of the net, never getting it near Meyer.  Mike Ryan also had a breakaway shot that went wide.  The two best scoring opportunities that NU would have all night came back to haunt them later as they suffered from a lack of offense.  The dogs have scored only 5 goals in their last 4 games.   Ryan Zoller saw his first playing time of the season.  Coach Crowder placed him on defense in the absence of both Arik Engbrecht, who is recovering from back pain, and John Peterman.  Zoller scored his first goal of the season in his first game at 11:08 of the first period on assists from Trevor Reschny and Scott Selig.  That was it offensively as SCSU goalie Scott Meyer made 33 saves and led his team to the win.  Mike Gilhooly was no less effective in net for the NU Huskies, but he was beaten late in the second period and he suffered from defensive breakdownitis in the third.

SCSU's Ryan Malone  scored at 18:01 from Jon Cullen and Chris Purslow in a scrum in front of Gilhooly.  A mere 28-seconds later at 18:29  Keith Anderson notched the eventual game winner from Matt Hendricks and Cullen.  It was the classic type of quick one-two punch that knocks the wind out of a teams' lungs.

Northeastern was unable to recover in the third period.  At 10:40  Hendricks scored from  Anderson and Cullen.  At 13:35 Malone scored his second of the night and Cullen scored his fourth assist with Joe Motzko.  The out of town dogs skated off with the win.

The worst part of this game is that no one on the ice seemed to be interested in playing.  SCSU played average enough to win the game, and the local dogs played less than average enough to bore the small crowd that came to the game.  Maybe it was day after Thanksgiving hangover time.  Maybe a little too much pumpkin pie.  The Huskies next opponent is against the Black Bears of Maine in a two game road trip.

Let's go Huskies!