In the words of legendary Raiders owner Al Davis- “just win, baby.”
Winning, they say, cures all ails. And Northeastern Men’s Hockey has been doing that, riding a three game winning streak into this weekend’s tilt with Merrimack, and the team is coming off their first Friday win and weekend sweep of the season. With a win over Merrimack, the Huskies would reach the .500 mark for the first time since early October. Sitting at 18th in the Pairwise, and with 9-10 games in front of them against team currently higher than them in the Pairwise, the stage is set for the Huskies to write their own story and crash into the NCAA Tournament picture.
But there’s one specific thing that concerns me as we approach the defining chapter of the season; Northeastern has a scoring problem.
Now, it’s not an issue at the top of the scoresheet. The Huskies are led by their trio of top forwards: Hobey candidates Jack Williams (12-16-28) and Cam Lund (10-14-24), as well as their usual linemate Dylan Hryckowian (12-10-22) all average at least a point per game, with the third NU Hobey candidate Vinny Borgesi (3-16-19) being a regular contributor from the blue line. Unfortunately, the drop off after those players is stark. Only one other player is averaging half a point per game or more, forward Cristophe Tellier (3-10-13). All five of them have spent at least some time, and for the Big Three, all of their time, this season on the top line or top pairing, as well as on the power play, putting themselves in prime positions to score points. Those five are joined only by defenseman Jackson Dorrington (2-8-10) with double digits in the points column. The issues start once you look beyond this group of six.
This stat sheet discrepancy was discussed on the latest WRBB Hockey Show, which aired a couple days before this published, but independently we all came to the same conclusions when looking at the box scores. The six players above have scored 43 of the 54 goals for Northeastern this season (79.6%), and 116 of 154 points (75.3%) tallied by Huskies this season. The four forwards have accounted for an absurd 82.2% of goals from that position group. This creates a lineup imbalance where if there’s ever a game where these top guys are held in check, it becomes exceedingly difficult for Northeastern to win. Now many times, they do come through, as Williams and Lund did against Vermont last weekend, which also was aided by excellent goaltending from Cameron Whitehead. But hoping that the goalie can hold the opposition at bay long enough for your star players to come through is a dangerous game to play.
In our preseason interview with Coach Keefe, he led off stating he was excited about the depth of this Northeastern team, and went on to talk about some specific players who he expected to have big impacts this year. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for some of those impacts to be seen. Sophomores Andy Moore and Eli Sebastian were specifically named by Keefe as guys to take a big step forward; they’ve combined for 2 assists in 40 combined games, both by Moore. Neither has scored a goal in their collegiate career yet, while combining for just 28 shots on net (49 shot attempts total) all year. To his credit, Moore has also profiled analytically as a top defensive centerman so far this season, but production on the third line does ask for some scoring.
Transfers Ryan McGuire and Nick Rhéaume have provided value in their own ways this year, namely McGuire on the faceoff dot and Rhéaume as a penalty killer, but they each have matching 2-1-3 lines coming into the home stretch despite playing all 22 games thus far and coming off career seasons at their previous schools. They each have gotten the puck on net at a better rate that Moore or Sebastian, with 37 SOG (60 shot attempts) for Rhéaume and 35 SOG (51 attempts) for McGuire, but each are a bit snakebitten this year compared to each of their last two seasons. Both players are shooting just over 5% this year, whereas last season Rhéaume shot 13% and McGuire 16.2%. Both players are the kinds who can make a living in close to the net, where 3 of their combined 4 goals have come this year, including Rhéaume’s power play tally last Friday. Defenseman transfer Joaquim Lemay, an offensive minded defender who scored 5 goals and 18 points last season, snapped his own 7 game pointless streak with a secondary assist on the opening goal last Saturday for just his fourth point as a Husky.
Among the freshmen, Joe Connor leads the group with 7 points (3 goals), and he gets the puck on net at a good rate (55 SOG, 103 attempts both 4th among forwards), but he’s also shooting a mere 5.5% and has struggled to stay out of the penalty box. Ben Poitras and Griffin Erdman, both players expected to make an impact as freshmen, have been in the lineup all season but only have 2 assists each, and a combined 37 SOG and 61 shot attempts over the course of the season). James Fisher scored his first collegiate goal against Merrimack and has gotten 9 of his other 10 attempts on net.
Ultimately, the goal of this look up and down the roster was to showcase two things- that Northeastern has control of their destiny for the remainder of the season, but also that in order to achieve that destiny, they are going to need contributions from players beyond their Big Three forwards and top defenseman, a flaw they succumbed to last year when the Hryckowians and Campbell were the only line putting the puck in the net down the stretch. When you look at any of the teams ahead of them nationally or in-conference, you’ll see production from top-of-the-lineup players, but nearly every other team will also have more scoring from players further down the lineup than the Huskies have gotten. In this sport, it is just so exceedingly hard to win when relying on only a handful of players to carry the goal-scoring load.
The good news as it relates to all of this is that regression goes both ways. They currently have far and away the lowest team shooting percentage in Hockey East and of any team showing signs of national relevance this season. If the next two shots Cam Lund takes are saved by the opposing goaltender, Williams and Hryckowian will be the only two players on the entire Northeastern roster shooting over 10% on the season. They are also the only two players of the 24 skaters who have dressed for NU this year with more actual goals than expected goals (xG), as reported by CollegeHockeyNews, this season. That is to say, mathematically, nearly everyone else on the roster is due to have a bounce go their way. There is of course more to hockey than simply shooting 10 pucks from wherever and having one go in, the low shooting percentages are in part a sign that the rest of the team hasn’t quite generated the quality of goal scoring chances that they need to, but it does go to show how much more potential exists in this group.
Northeastern’s lineup is loaded with talent that have proven goal-scoring abilities at the college level, players who came into college with expectations of greater offensive contributions, and players who up and down the lineup are having uncharacteristically poor offensive seasons. If these players can start getting the puck on net more, generating more offense to supplement the play the team gets out of Williams, Lund, Hryckowian, and Borgesi every game, the Huskies will have a lineup formidable enough to contend with any team in the country, and be a dangerous matchup for anyone in the back half of the season.
Cover photo taken by Alex Weiss, NUHuskies.com