On Tuesday’s Media and Fan Q & A event put on by the Northeastern Men’s Hockey program, head coach Jerry Keefe confirmed speculation earlier this week that Northeastern is adding two more transfers to their roster for the upcoming season. While the transfer defenseman has not yet been announced, we did learn that forward Brett Edwards is transferring to Northeastern after a four year career with the Denver Pioneers.
Edwards is a 5-foot-11, 200 pound left shot forward from Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. He was a member of the 2022 National Champion team while at Denver, and put up 16 points (7 goals) in over 100 career games at Denver. Primarily playing in the bottom six, Edwards is a player that people from multiple levels of his development have praised as having an insatiable compete level, a high-quality shot, and is an incredible teammate. His coach in junior hockey once described him as “a leader who hates to lose,” as well as described his game as a power forward who is “really strong on his skates and shoots the puck like a pro,” and it is easy to see why a player like that would be a target for Coach Keefe and his staff. While at Denver he was also a four-time member of the All-Academic Team, and prior to Denver played four years in the Alberta Junior Hockey League with Drumheller and Fort McMurray.
In the media session, Coach Keefe also talked about wanting to get a little older via the transfer portal, and to bring in players with experience playing at the highest level of collegiate hockey to set an example and a standard for his team as an indicator of what it takes to reach new heights both on and off the ice. Edwards, previously described as having excellent leadership qualities and being “very passionate about his teammates,” seems to check those intangible boxes as well, and appears to be someone who will be extremely valuable to the Huskies both as a reliable bottom six contributor night in and night out, but also in the locker room as a mentor and leader to the other Huskies.
We expect Edwards to slide into the Huskies’ fourth line, which we currently project to have Matt Demelis and one of Billy Norcross or Andy Moore as linemates. We also would expect to see him get some run as a penalty killer. As we said in our summer roster breakdown, we will always project lines no matter how often we are wrong, so things may change with any of those players before the season starts October 7th.
Welcome Brett to Northeastern and we look forward to watching him on the ice. Only a few months left before puck drop. As always, go Huskies!