AMHERST – The University of Massachusetts men’s hockey team was unable to complete the weekend sweep, as Northeastern scored a goal in each period to defeat the Minutemen 3-0 on Saturday at the Mullins Center.
The setback leaves UMass at 10-9-2 overall and 3-6-2 in Hockey East, while the Huskies move to 7-10-3 and 2-7-3 in league action.
“I just thought we were missing the urgency, the energy that we had last night,” UMass coach Greg Carvel said. “That led to our details being sloppy. Both of their goals, I thought, were us being sloppy, giving them opportunities. I thought their goalie played really well. They did a really good job protecting the net front and blocking shots.
“They had more desperation than we did tonight. In our league, when every game is going to be really close, the difference is who’s more ready to play. I thought the first 10 minutes were way better than we were. I thought the rest of the game was pretty even, but they had more desperation than we did tonight.”
Northeastern opened the scoring 11:27 into the first period. Dylan Hryckowian collected the puck from Cam Lund and dropped it to Vinny Borgesi, who ripped it off the post and in to give the Huskies a 1-0 advantage.
With the second period winding down, Northeastern doubled its lead. Jake Boltman returned his rebound from the slot off a feed from behind the net from Hryckowian and Jack Williams at 18:52.
Hryckowian later added an unassisted empty net goal for the Huskies 18:20 into the third period for his third point of the game.
Northeastern finished the night with a 39-35 shot advantage and went 0-for-1 on the power play, while the Minutemen were 0-for-2. Michael Hrabal stopped 36 saves for UMass, and Cameron Whitehead made 35 saves during the shutout for the Huskies.
UMass will return on Friday when they travel to North Andover to face Merrimack at 7 p.m.
