ORONO, Me- One of the hottest teams in college hockey invaded Alfond Arena for the start of a two game Hockey East series Friday night. The visitors from Northeastern University scored three first period goals, and then held off Maine for a 3-2 win before a crowd of 3,732, ending a short two game win streak for the Black Bears.
Brandon Hawkins converted a one timer into the back of the net past Maine goalie Jeremy Swayman to give the #12 Huskies a 1-0 lead at the 6:56 mark of the first. Just 3:12 later, Patrick Schule buried a rebound to make it 2-0 Northeastern. Maine freshman forward Jacob Schmidt-Svejstrup was called for a five minor major and a game misconduct for head butting just 1:04 after the Schule goal. Matt Filipe turned that into a 3-0 lead for the guests with a powerplay goal at 12:54.
Ryan Smith got Maine (7-10-2, 3-4-2 Hockey East) on the board 2:42 into the middle period, when he skated down the right wing on a partial breakout and beat NU goalie Cayden Primeau for his fourth of the season to cut the lead to 3-1. Swayman kept the Bears in the game after the three goal first period outburst by the Huskies, making several key stops in the second and third periods to keep the deficit to a pair.
Maine got a powerplay with 4:39 left in the game, and 1:01 into that powerplay Adam Dawe buried a rebound for his first collegiate goal to make it 3-2. The Bears pulled Swayman with 1:20 left, but Primeau made the big saves when he needed to and the hosts couldn’t come up the equalizer.
Swayman ended with 39 saves, as the Huskies outshot the Bears 42-21. Primeau made 19 stops in the win, as Northeastern improved to 13-4-1, 7-2-1 in Hockey East with their 9th win in 10 games. Filipe added an assist to go along with his first period goal, Tyler Madden had two assists. NU was 1-3 on the powerplay, while Maine was 1-1. The two teams finish off the two game series tomorrow night at Alfond Arena, with faceoff scheduled for 7 pm.
