#6 PROVIDENCE (13-16-6) 3, at #3 NEW HAMPSHIRE (22-9-4) 2 (at BC)
 
I may have been one of the few who waited up till about 11:45 to watch
this game on NESN - I resisted the urge to check HOCKEY-L for the score.
:-)  Fortunately, NESN cut out the three intermissions for the delayed
broadcast so that the whole game took only a little over two hours to
show.  (Originally scheduled air time was 10:00, but NESN chose to
show the Seton Hall-BC hoop game instead, and that game went into
overtime, pushing back the PC-UNH DB till 11:30 and then about 11:45.)
 
Congratulations to the Providence Lakers - uh, Friars.
 
OVERALL GAME THOUGHTS
BC has not been a good place for favorites this week.
 
UNH is the third #3 seed not to make it to the semifinals in the
11-year history of HE.  In 1986, Northeastern (20-17-2) was upset by
Lowell (11-29-1).  And in 1988, BU (14-17-3) was upset by PC
(13-18-5).
 
UNH ends a three-year run of Garden appearances.  PC returns to the
Garden after a two-year absence.
 
THE GAME ITSELF
Not much has been said about the play of Providence, but I was VERY
impressed with them and the job Paul Pooley has done.  I considered
them a real threat for an upset before this game, because they have
been playing their best hockey of the year and also because they tied
UNH twice in the regular season.  So, I was not all that surprised at
the outcome.
 
I don't know how much of it was UNH not showing intensity, but the
Friars did a masterful job of controlling the center ice play,
especially in the second period when UNH threatened to blow the game
open.  Here, you could clearly see the effect of the LSSU style that
Pooley has been teaching the Friars.  UNH had to work quite hard to
get the puck into the zone, and Bell was superb when he had to be.
The PC defense also played better than I had seen it play this season.
Justin Gould has developed into a solid two-way defenseman, and Hal
Gill took advantage of his size to give UNH all kinds of trouble
getting shots from inside.
 
The first goal by Quenneville was a thing of beauty.  Early in the
second, he was given a breakaway chance on a feed by Gould, I believe,
and went in to beat Cavicchi through the pads.  Cavicchi, btw, saw
fewer shots than Bell but still had a fine game.  After the
Quenneville goal made it 1-0, PC carried play for about the next 7-8
minutes, cycling deep in the corners and frustrating the UNH
defensemen who could not take the puck away.  They produced most of
their shots in the period during this stretch, but Cavicchi turned
them all away when a two-goal deficit seemed close at hand.
 
UNH began to turn the tide with the help of several power plays on
which they probably got most of their 15 shots in the period.  They
would slowly pick up more momentum as time went on, and this carried
into the third.  I wondered if PC could keep up their relentless
pace of forechecking and backchecking the rest of the game.
 
As the score remained 1-0 in the third, I started to think the game
might end that way.  But Flinton got one of the few great chances from
right in front of Bell when he whacked a loose puck past the PC
goalie, tying it at 1-1.  Before the first ten minute segment ended,
Schmidtke had given UNH the lead on a PPG when his shot from the point
went past Bell, who saw nothing with UNH's Steve Pleau in front of him
as well as Bell's teammate Gill.  With UNH up 2-1, it certainly seemed
as if the Friars were done - they had played a nice game most of the
way, but powerful UNH finally did what it had to and was on their way
to victory.  Or were they?
 
The Breen goal was made by Kramer, as he drew Todd Hall to him and
made the pass over to give Breen a breakaway similar to the one
Quenneville had scored on earlier.  To that point, UNH had done a nice
job of effectively sitting on the lead, but one small mistake in not
being able to clear the zone led to the tying goal, and it was 2-2,
headed for OT.
 
David Green, who was superb killing penalties all night for PC, was
credited with the GWG if I remember correctly, as he got just enough
of a stick on a shot from the outside to redirect it past Cavicchi in
overtime.
 
UNH certainly appeared stunned at that point.  They had outshot PC in
every period (except OT - 1-0 for PC), owned the special teams (killed
2 of 2 PC PPs, gone 1 for 5 on the PP), and gotten good netminding
from Cavicchi.  But it wasn't enough.
 
Providence has to be considered a real threat to walk away with the HE
title and an automatic bid to the NC$$s.  Bell is playing as well as
any goaltender in the league, the team itself is peaking, and they can
clearly beat anyone else along the way.  Their semifinal opponent is
yet to be determined, but I don't think it matters much to them.
 
Am I the only one amazed by the way the season and playoffs have
turned out in HE?  In particular, I can not think of another season
where the top finishers in the league were so frightened of their
quarterfinal opponents - and where the underdogs had such a good
chance of winning.  In the 9 vs 1, 7 vs 2, and 6 vs 3 series, the
underdogs all had either beaten or tied their opponents at least once
during the season.  The one series that on the face of it seems to be
most one-sided is UML-NU (tonight) with NU winning all 3 games, but
something tells me Crowder can get his team motivated for a one game
series.
 
It seems to me that Maine has a solid enough edge over UMA, too, and
an upset in that game would surprise me.  Nothing else would, neither
a Lowell win over NU nor a Merrimack win over BU, with the latter
having the potential to be a carbon copy of this game: a Merrimack
team that relies on team defense and great goaltending against a more
powerful and well-balanced BU team.
 
So, we have 2 upsets in 2 games in HE...will there be more?
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93