Matt writes:
>There seems to be a theme in these posts that I've picked up on...
>All of the brawls seem to involve Northeastern!!
>
>Are we just a dirty team? Not disiplined? Any comments?
 
I think things have changed a great deal both with Northeastern and in HE,
so remember that we're talking about things that "were", not "are".  I
don't know what started the Colgate brawl that was mentioned, but both teams
were responsible for the 1988 Lowell incident.  The next year, NU was about
2/3 responsible for the Merrimack brawl.
 
The Huskies have always been one of the more physical teams and more penalized
teams in the East - though I never thought they were as cheap as Lowell was
about five years ago.  When Don McKenney took over the reins from Fern
Flaman in 1989, Don announced at the HE Preseason Media Luncheon that "we
will NOT (pounding his fist) lead the league in penalty minutes again, I
can assure you."  But they did - even though Don had won a Lady Byng in his
NHL days - and they had gotten in the Merrimack brawl just four weeks into
the season.
 
Lowell and Northeastern were always doing battle with pucks and fists,
though 1988 may have brought everything to a head.  There was the 9-0 Lowell
win in December 1987 when, up by 9 goals, Lowell's Tony LoPilato vaulted
off the bench and jumped Claude Lodin from behind on his way to the penalty
box.  And there was Harry Mews' first game as a Huskie in 1986 when he
scored a couple of times and got ejected for fighting when all the non-goalies
on the ice for NU and Lowell ended up in altercations after a Lowell player
slammed a Huskie into the penalty box partition and knocked him out.
 
A big part of it, in my view, has always been that since NU couldn't recruit
on a par with the other three Boston schools, it had to go after some of the
lesser known, smaller and maybe more physical kids like Rossi, Mews,
Schure, Lodin, Brian Dowd, etc.  NU's smaller home rink also made it
more advantageous to play the physical style and indeed, until the past
year or two, the Huntington Hounds had one of the best home records in
the league.  The last year or two, they've cleaned up their act a bit and
not been as physical, and their home record has been atrocious.  It will
be interesting to see in what direction Ben Smith takes them over the next
few years.
 
The thing is, when the Huskies play the clean, physical style they played
Monday against BU, they're one of the most exciting teams to watch and they
always have a chance to win.  In the past, when they fell behind in a game
they expected to win or were getting blown out, they had a bad habit of
getting extremely cheap.  I haven't seen that lately; we didn't see it
Monday.
 
Finally, my experience has been that NU has been one of the most emotional
teams I've known, both on and off the ice, and it seemed to me as if the
staff intentionally recruited players who they considered to have "heart"
since they could not compete with BC for the Janneys and Leetchs, or BU
for the Cullens and Kelfers.   This made them a more inconsistent team
than many, and at times it was downright aggravating to follow them.  But
the times that the Huskies reached down deep and gave it everything they
had, like the 1988 HE Championship win vs #1 Maine and the shocking 1987
Beanpot semifinal upset over #2 Harvard (15-1-0; NU was 6-16-3), were some
of the most enjoyable times I've had watching hockey (admittedly having
been biased during those games).
 
 
- mike