“Hey Harvard, can you feel it?”
It was a seemingly harmless question asked by Northeastern fans to the Crimson players skating on the FleetCenter ice during last night’s first Beanpot matchup.
Mike Ryan delivered Harvard the cruel answer.
The Huskies junior forward made his Crimson counterparts feel anything but at home in the two teams’ first encounter this season. With a trifecta of goals, Ryan provided all the firepower Northeastern needed as it cruised to a 5-2 victory over Harvard University.
“To come up here and get a hat trick, it’s something I thought about as a kid when I was watching [the Beanpot],” Ryan said. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet, but it was a pleasure.”
Ryan set the tone for Northeastern and his three-tally path early on by taking immediate advantage of his team’s first power-play opportunity. After corralling a short pass from freshman center Jason Guerriero in front of the Harvard net, Ryan deposited his first goal of the night at 9:24 for a 1-0 Northeastern lead.
The Crimson bounced back with newfound energy in the second. After coming out relatively flat for the first 20 minutes, Harvard mounted offensive pressure from the drop of the puck. The pressure eventually took hold of Gibson just 3:25 into the period, as freshman winger Brendan Bernakevitch beat him top shelf to knot the game at 1-1.
Harvard continued to punish Northeastern on the boards and stayed on the offensive for much of the first half of the period. However, it only took one mental lapse by freshman goalie Dov Grumet-Morris to swing the momentum back in Northeastern’s favor.
After stoning Husky winger Leon Hayward on a breakaway attempt just minutes earlier, Grumet-Morris allowed the Huskies to regain the lead on a weak shot by sophomore center Ryan Dudgeon. The seemingly harmless puck trickled through the five-hole of the young Harvard backstop, and a 2-1 deficit now stared down Crimson’s path to victory.
“It put us in the hole, but I feel I have a pretty good pulse on my kids and they didn’t quit,” said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni. “We kept coming, and we didn’t deviate from what we’ve done and tried to do.”
Unfortunately for the Crimson, neither did the Huskies.
Sophomore winger Eric Ortlip bumped the Northeastern lead to two in the period after beating Grumet-Morris from behind the net for his seventh goal of the season at 15:44.
Ryan finally took care of the Crimson for good — and gave the Huskies another chance to fill their 13-year void without a Beanpot title — with back-to-back goals in a span of 3:25 in the third for his 19th and 20th tallies of the season.
With the victory, Northeastern will take on Boston University in the 50th chapter of the Beanpot finals next Monday. The Huskies will be looking for revenge against the same team that spoiled their last chance to kiss the Beanpot in the 1999 title game. The Terriers skated away that night with a 4-2 triumph.
“There’s no doubt every time you walk around campus at Northeastern … whether it be the professors or the cook in the cafeteria line, they’re all giving you a little bit of jabs here and there [with] Beanpot this and Beanpot that,” Northeastern coach Bruce Crowder said. “It would be fantastic for the university, all the alumni [to win the Beanpot]. We just wanted to get ourselves in a position to be able to be playing for it, and that’s what we were able to accomplish tonight.”
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