Fun story, Northeastern is in the Beanpot final. Less fun story, someone decided they had to take a quick trip down to Hartford to pick up some milk and play a conference hockey game in the middle of the week before they can look ahead to Monday.
Game Scheduling: 0/10. Mid-Beanpot games are necessary, but the team is usually not very focused on them. Mid-week games are occasionally necessary, unless you’re UConn and you play one every week so the local AHL affiliate can have the arena on weekends. A mid-week, mid-Beanpot road game is basically the worst game you could possibly devise to schedule, so here we are, having one.
Opponent: 0/10. UConn almost Beat Northeastern at Matthews at the start of November. Then, they did not. They have exactly zero (0) Hockey East wins between then and now, which places them eleventh (11th) in the eleven team Hockey East Association. Their conference record in that stretch is 0-11-1. In other words, they bad.
UConn does have 3 wins since that fateful November night. They are:
Vs. Brown (one of the worst teams in the country)
Vs. St. Lawrence (a team worse than Brown)
And vs. Yale (Actually good but half their players were at World Juniors)
So… yeah. Nothing to write home about.
As a team, they are shooting 6% in Hockey East play while saving 88.2%. Those numbers are both abysmal. Their team PP% is 14.5% while their team PK% is 75.9%. Those numbers are both abysmal. Overall they have the 4th worst shooting percentage in D1, alongside a bottom-10 power play, and a bottom-15 save percentage and penalty kill. Their Corsi hovers around 50, at least.
Streaming Options: 0/10. UConn has the almost unquestioned worst streaming package in the Hockey East Association, as they never have home games on television and their online stream is a $10 charge that continues to recurrently charge you unless you specifically go back to their site after the game and cancel it. Because god forbid somebody just wants to watch one hockey game. If you plan to stream this one, we suggest you don’t and just follow on twitter instead, because it isn’t worth the money and the $10 we’re paying is already more than they deserve.
Ambiance: 0/10. It’s Hartford folks, easily the worst “major” city in New England. The Hartford Civic Center has a capacity just north of 16,000, which is excellent because UConn’s most recent midweek game there drew an announced attendance of 2,655. We’re expecting Beanpot Consolation Game levels of energy in the arena tonight.
Mr. Bright Lights Rating: 0/10. Mr. Bright Lights will not be very enthused, as this game is the furthest thing from Bright Lights this side of the Jon A. Ryan Skating Arena.
Should you care? 10/10. NU is barely hanging onto both home ice in the Hockey East Playoffs and their NCAA tournament berth. Two points from the worst team in the conference would go a long way towards not severing those chances. They probably have to finish the regular season 7-2, so racking up a couple of those wins this week and getting it to 5-2 would help.
Do you care? 3/10, if I had to guess.
Will Ryan Ruck start? 2/10. I mean, Cayden Primeau just played a Beanpot game two days ago and has another one coming up. The last time Ruck started a game while Primeau was physically present, it was against UConn. It’s not inconceivable that he starts, if you were to pick one game all semester to have it happen, this would certainly be the one.
Will Biagio Lerario take a bad penalty? I certainly hope not.
Does UConn have some good hockey players? Sure. Karl El-Mir has a 12 goal 22 point senior year going, which we can all agree is unexpected. Jachym Kondelik also has 22 points, and he’s a freshman. Alexander Payusov is still hanging around. Watch those guys.
Does UConn have two drafted goaltenders saving below .900 on the season? Yes.
Let’s remember a time Northeastern played UConn! This one.
Predictions:
Fallon (24 points): NU 3 UConn 1
Davis (21 points): NU 3 UConn 1
Downie (18 points): NU 4 UConn 1
Gordon (16 points): NU 3 UConn 2 in 2OT