The UMass-Lowell hockey team never wavered. The River Hawks never blinked. They never lost the "supreme confidence" they seemed to exude since the start of postseason play, even after Northeastern rang up back-to-back goals - 25 seconds apart, no less - to break a scoreless tie in the second period.
"I really liked how we responded after they went up, 2-0," said UMass-Lowell coach Blaise MacDonald. "In the past, we had lost our structure and our game when that happened, but I thought we really maintained the way we wanted to play. We just kept chipping away."
The fifth-seeded River Hawks (20-15-2), who had been swept by the Huskies in three regular-season meetings, rallied from that calamitous 25-second stretch in the second to eliminate the second-seeded Huskies with a stunning 3-2 victory in overtime in a Hockey East semifinal last night at TD Banknorth Garden.
UMass-Lowell will play in the championship tonight, taking on BU, a 3-2 victor over BC in the late game.
Junior left winger Chris Auger redirected Ben Holmstrom's hard shot from the left circle past NU goalie Brad Thiessen, the Hockey East player of the year, three minutes into OT to propel the River Hawks to their second appearance in the Hockey East championship game, and first since 1994.
The Huskies (25-11-4), ranked fifth in the country, opened the door when they were penalized with 1:05 remaining in regulation for having too many men on the ice.
"I think the team that won the game deserved the win," said NU's Greg Cronin, the Hockey East coach of the year. "It was an odd twist that we took a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty with a minute to go. We failed in getting a puck deep, which would've given us another minute to defend. As I told the team, we were uncharacteristically sloppy, we were uncharacteristically fuzzy with our structure, and Lowell just kept coming and they stuck to their game plan for 65 minutes and they deserved to win.
With goalie Carter Hutton pulled, Scott Campbell made NU pay when he converted the rebound of Maury Edwards's hard shot, tallying the tying goal at 19:40 on a wide-open backdoor chip that caught Thiessen off guard and beat the kick-save attempt of defenseman Jim Driscoll.
"Lately, we've been playing with supreme confidence," said Auger, who recorded the second winning goal of his career after tallying against Merrimack two years ago. "We've been working really hard and it showed up again last weekend at Vermont, where we got down a couple goals again."
UMass-Lowell twice overcame deficits to sweep Vermont in the quarterfinals and advance to the semis for the first time since 2002. "We knew we had been able to do it before, and we just stuck to our system, and that supreme confidence everyone was playing with really helped us," Auger said.
Supreme confidence? "He's Canadian," MacDonald said when asked to expand on Auger's characterization of the team's mind-set. "He uses that word." Then breaking into a broad smile, MacDonald added, "I'd say 'wicked.' "
Wicked, as in good. NU's third-period implosion, however, was wicked, as in bad.
After Kyle Kraemer (on a power play) and Rob Rassey (on a chip-in off a goalmouth scrum) had given NU a 2-0 lead in the second, putting shots past Hutton (25 saves), the implosion began when sophomore Ryan Blair put UMass-Lowell on the board at 18:44 of the period when he took a pretty centering pass from Campbell (one goal, one assist) in the right circle and beat Thiessen with a top-shelf tally.
"The big goal was when Ryan Blair scores that goal to make it 2-1," MacDonald said. "It was a beautiful goal and Blairsey is not known for his goal scoring, so we were happy about that. In the third period, I thought we did a great job of winning faceoffs, keeping the puck down low, really wearing out their defensemen and that was a big part of our game for us."
After he potted the winner, Auger retreated to the UMass-Lowell's locker room, where he found himself in the epicenter of a happy mosh pit of teammates.
"It was a pretty good feeling," he said. "Everybody was giving me high-five punches in the face. It was just great to see everyone excited for everybody. We're a team and everyone was giving credit to everyone else and it was a great feeling and I hope to continue that tomorrow."
