The 95th season of Northeastern University Men’s Hockey is nearly upon us, and it will be a season unlike any before it as Northeastern plays the year without a true dedicated home rink. The first full season without the beloved Matthews Arena, Northeastern will take the show on the road across New England. As always, NUHB will bring you coverage game after game, highlight after highlight, and recruit after recruit.
With that, we kick off the annual New to Northeastern series, where we go through all the new faces that will suit up for the Huskies this season, as we do every year with the goaltenders; in this season’s case, goaltender, singular. With All-American goalie Lawton Zacher returning to Huntington Avenue for his senior season, and Matthew DellaRusso returning for his sophomore season at third string, the Huskies did not have to look far to fill the hole made by Quentin Sigurdson’s transfer to Michigan State.
#37 Sam Caulfield– A native of Newton, MA, Caulfield makes the trek through the suburbs to Boston to start his collegiate career. A 6-foot-3, 185 pound goaltender who catches with the traditional left hand, Caulfield starred at Milton Academy in the Massachusetts Prep ranks for two seasons before moving onto junior hockey. While at Milton, he posted seasons of a .948 save percentage/1.94 goals-against-average in 2022-23 and a .929 SV%/2.72 GAA in 2023-24. He was the Top Goaltender in the ISL Prep League both seasons, and was named league MVP and All-NEPSAC First Team in 2022-23. Prior to committing to Northeastern, he was committed to Colgate.
After Milton, he made the jump first to the North American Hockey League, where he played 21 games in 2024-25 for the New Hampshire Mountain Kings, posting a solid .921 save percentage and 3.08 GAA. In 2025, he made the jump to Tier A junior hockey with the USHL’s Chicago Steel, where he played 11 games, posting a .899 SV% and 3.13 GAA, and one shutout. He would go on to join Baie-Comeau of the QMJHL midway through the season, and his performance took off once he went north of the border, posting a .926 SV% and 2.72 GAA and 2 shutouts in 14 games for a Baie-Comeau team that was among the league’s worst.
Caulfield projects to be the Huskies’ number 2 goaltender and even though Zacher played the majority of time last season, Sigurdson did see minutes backing up both him as well as Cameron Whitehead in 2024-25. It would not be a surprise at all if Caulfield gets called upon to play, or even start, at some point during his freshman season. Caulfield enters Northeastern with 4 years of eligibility under the new NCAA eligibility guidelines.
Our next New to Northeastern article will go over the defensemen, where we have a staggering seven new additions to the blue line this season.
As always, go Huskies!