Friday at Northeastern: Live Stats | Watch | Listen | Game Notes
Sunday v. Massachusetts: Live Stats | Watch | Listen
 
LOWELL, Mass.—Looking to regain momentum in the end of season push, the No. 14 UMass Lowell men's hockey team (13-5-3, 10-4-1 Hockey East) sets its sight on a pair of games against ranked opponents No. 15 Northeastern (16-7-1, 8-5-1 HEA) and No. 9 Massachusetts (12-7-2, 9-3-2 HEA). The River Hawks open the weekend with a quick trip to Matthews Arena on Friday, Jan. 28 to visit the Huskies before returning to the friendly confines of the Tsongas Center on Sunday for a matinee matchup with the Minutemen.
 
SCOUTING THE RIVER HAWKS
UMass Lowell enters tonight's contest with an 13-5-3 / 10-4-1 record after dropping a pair of games last weekend to Merrimack, 3-1 and 3-2.  The losses put the kybosh on a five-game winning streak after a weekend sweep of Maine.  The River Hawks are 6-4-0 on the road and 7-1-3 on the familiar ice of the Tsongas Center.  UMass Lowell currently sits in the number 14 slot in both the USCHO and USA Hockey Magazine Polls.  It is the team's 11th week in the Top 20 and the number 9 spot, a week ago, is their highest ranking of the season.  Hockey East Coaches, in their pre-season poll, placed the River Hawks seventh in the conference.  UMass Lowell currently holds first place in the Hockey East Conference standings gaining that spot with a sweep of Vermont in the final weekend of action before the winter break.  The team currently has a one-point lead over Massachusetts who the team will face on Sunday afternoon.  Andre Lee leads the team in goals with eleven.  Carl Berglund tops the points chart with seventeen.  Berglund's thirteen-assists lead the club.  Goaltenders Henry Welsch and Owen Savory split time in goal evenly a year ago, but this year Savory has shouldered the heavier workload.  Savory has gotten the call up 15 times and has been among the nation's best.  He's got a 1.61 GAA and a .936 save percentage.  The senior has four shutouts.  Welsch has started five times with one shutout and a 2.77 GAA and a .878 save percentage.
 
SCOUTING THE HUSKIES
Northeastern has been among the upper echelon in Hockey East this season.  They enter tonight's game with a record of 16-7-1 / 8-5-1 after coming up short in a pair of games last weekend against Massachusetts.  The team is ranked 15th in both national; polls.  The Huskies are 10-3-1 at the historic Matthews Arena and 5-3-0 on the road.  They have split a pair of neutral site games.  The Hockey East Coaches pre-season poll slotted Northeastern in fourth place; they currently sit in third place, five points behind UMass Lowell.  Fourteen different players have scored goals, seven have five or more.  Aidan McDonough, one of the nation's top scorers, leads the team with 16-goals and 23-points.  Goalie Devon Levi has started every game and has a 1.55 GAA, but he has departed for the Olympics.  Evan Fear and T.J. Semptimphelter have combined for 46:38 of Hockey.
 
ALL-TIME SERIES VS. NORTHEASTERN
This is the 126th meeting between the two schools in a series that dates back to 1983.  UMass Lowell leads the series 64-51-10, but the more recent meetings show Northeastern with a slight edge.  That edge is reflected in the last sixteen games between the two teams, Northeastern leads 8-7-1.  UMass Lowell has won just three of the last eight.  The River Hawks won this season's first meeting in overtime, but teams split a pair of games a year ago, each winning in the others' building.  The Huskies swept the two-game season series the year before after taking two of three from the River Hawks in each of the two previous seasons.  The two met in the 2016 Hockey East Championship Game.  Northeastern won that match up, 3-2, but UMass Lowell does hold an edge in HEA Tournament play 10-5-0.  The two teams met in one of the first NCAA regular season games played outside the United States.  UML won that match up in the opening game of the Friendship Four Tournament in Belfast, Northern Ireland in November of 2015. 
 
THE FIRST TIME AROUND
UMass Lowell overcame a late third period 1-0 deficit to emerge victorious in overtime back on November 12th in the Tsongas Center.  Lucas Condotta's power play deflection of a Ben Meehan shot tied the game with just 5:51 remaining on the clock.  Meehan then grabbed the headlines with the game winner at 1:26 of overtime.  Goalie Owen Savory made 16-saves to earn the win.
 
AT THE TSONGAS
The UMass Lowell 2-1 OT victory at the Tsongas Center, November 12th, ended what had become a Northeastern three-game winning streak at the Tsongas Center.  Northeastern has gone home with a win in each of their three previous visits to Lowell, two by shutout.  It had been three years and a day since the River Hawks had topped Northeastern in Lowell.  That last River Hawk win against Northeastern at the Tsongas Center was by a 4-2 count on November 11, 2018.
 
EXTRA TIME?
When UMass Lowell and Northeastern meet 60-minutes is often not enough time to decide matters.  This year's first meeting between the two teams proved the point as UMass Lowell grabbed a 2-1 overtime victory.  Eighteen of the last 54 games between the two teams have gone to overtime.  UMass Lowell holds 8-4-6 edge in those OT games, and 11-5-10 overtime advantage all-time in long history between the two.  More recently ten of the last 26 games have required extra time with the River Hawks holding a slight edge, 4-3-3.
 
ABOUT LAST SEASON
UMass Lowell and Northeastern split a pair of games last season.  Each won on the road.  The River Hawks won the initial meeting, 4-1, after falling behind 1-0 71-seconds into the contest at the Matthews Arena on February 19th.  Charlie Levesque scored twice for the River Hawks.  Connor Sodergren and Seth Barton also scored goals.  Henry Welsch stopped 15 of NU's 16-shots.  Four different players scored goals 24-hours later as Northeastern turned the table on the River Hawks at the Tsongas Center, 4-0.  Connor Murphy earned the shutout with 32-saves.
 
RANKED vs. RANKED
UMass Lowell and Northeastern are both ranked in the top 15 in the country.  They have met eight times before when both were ranked in the top 15 in the country and little has been settled.  The two teams have evenly split those eight games 4-4-0.  The Huskies have won nine of 15-games when both have been ranked in the Top 20.  Northeastern is currently ranked 15th, UMass Lowell is ranked 14th according to both USCHO and USA Hockey Magazine.
 
SCORING AGAINST NORTHEASTERN
Only four players on the current UMass Lowell roster have ever scored goals against Northeastern.  Connor Sodergren, Reid Stefanson, Lucas Condotta and Ben Meehan have each found the back of the net against the Huskies.  Sodergren and Condotta top the scoring list with four-points apiece.  Sodergren has three-goals in eleven games against Northeastern.  Stefanson has three-points including a pair of goals.  Lucas Condotta has three assists.  Goalie Henry Welsch has faced the visitors twice showing a win and a loss.  He has a 2.50 GAA and an .872 save percentage against Northeastern.  Owen Savory has faced the Huskies just once.  He backstopped the UMass Lowell overtime 2-1 win earlier this season.
 
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
UMass Lowell and Northeastern have faced one another on eight different ice surfaces.  The two have battled at the Tsongas Center, Matthews Arena, Tully Forum (Billerica, Mass.), Fenway Park, Thompson Arena (Hanover, N.H.), Boston Garden, TD Garden and the SSE Arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2015.  UMass Lowell has played Boston College and New Hampshire in nine different buildings.  UMass Lowell has played Maine and Clarkson in ten different buildings.
 
AT MATTHEWS ARENA
UMass Lowell and Northeastern play one another tonight at the Matthews Arena.  It will be UMass Lowell's 65th game at the Matthews Arena.  The River Hawks have only visited two buildings more often, Maine's Alfond Arena in Orono and Merrimack's Lawler Arena in North Andover, Mass.  The River Hawks are 29-23-6 against Northeastern at the Matthews and also played Boston College at the Matthews when the Conte Forum was under construction.  In all UMass Lowell has 31 wins at the Matthews Arena.  That is the second most wins in any opponents building.  Only at Merrimack's Lawler Rink have the River Hawks won more often, 37 times.  Opening in 1910 the Matthews Arena is the oldest continuously operating indoor ice rink in the world.
 
THE COACH AS A PLAYER AT MATTHEWS
UMass Lowell Head Coach Norm Bazin scored his first collegiate goal at the Matthews Arena.  That goal came on November 9, 1990 at the 1:06 mark of the second period.  It cut Northeastern's lead to 4-3 in a game that would eventually go in the books as an 8-8 tie, the highest scoring tie in program history.  Dave Pensa and Tim Smallwood picked up the assists on Bazin's first goal.  It was also Bazin's first collegiate point.
 
IN NHL BUILDINGS
 
The Matthews Arena where tonight's contest is taking place was the original home ice for the NHL's Boston Bruins and later the WHA's New England Whalers, known now-a-days as the Carolina Hurricanes.  At the time it operated as the Boston Arena.  The River Hawks have a 47-45-10 record in buildings that have been the home to an NHL team.  UMass Lowell is 9-9-1 in the TD Garden/Fleet Center, 4-5-0 in the old Boston Garden, 1-2-0 at the CONSOL Energy Center, 1-0-1 at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, 2-3-2 at the XL Center and 31-25-6 in the Matthews Arena, the former Boston Arena the first home of the Boston Bruins and the current home of Northeastern.
 
BAZIN VS. KEEFE
This is the first season in which Norm Bazin and Jerry Keefe have faced one another from opposite benches.  Bazin won their first face-to-face meeting, November 12, 2021, with a 2-1 overtime River Hawk victory.  Keefe is in his first year leading the Husky program.  The new coach had been an assistant with Northeastern before taking over the program this past summer from Jim Madigan who moved into the position of Director of Athletics.  Madigan and Bazin both came on board for the 2011-12 season and since that time the two teams have shown a nearly even split in the series with Northeastern holding a 12-10-3 edge during the first ten-years.  Madigan had a 174-139-39 record during that 10-year period.  Bazin is 215-119-33 at UMass Lowell during that same stretch of time.  The Huskies won two Hockey East Tournament Championships and UMass Lowell has earned the trophy three times.
 
FAMILY CONNECTION
Northeastern defenseman Jordan Harris is the son of former UMass Lowell goalie Peter Harris.  The elder Harris played in 16 games between 1986 and 1990 with a 4.56 goals against average and a 4-5-1 record.  Peter Harris was drafted by the New York Islanders.  His son, Jordan, is a Montreal Canadiens draft pick.
 
A WIN TODAY...
Would put the River Hawks back in the win column and prevent a three game losing streak.  A regulation win would also, at the very least, maintain the UMass Lowell single-point lead in the Hockey East standings. It would also push the UMass Lowell record to 14-5-3 (.705), the second best record through 22-games during the Norm Bazin Era.
 
WHO'S NEXT...?
After tonight's contest at the Matthews Arena, the River Hawks get a day off before returning to the ice for a 1:00pm game against Massachusetts on Sunday.  UMass Lowell and UMass played a pair of games earlier in the season.  The River Hawks earned a shootout victory in the first meeting, but came up a goal short the second night.  The River Hawks lead the all-time series, 51-31-8.  Next weekend UMass Lowell heads to Boston College for a Friday night meeting and returns home for a Saturday non-conference get together with Dartmouth.  BC leads the all-time series 68-44-10, but the River Hawks have won two in a row including the teams first meeting this season.  UMass Lowell and Dartmouth have only met eight times with the River Hawks winning five times.
 
DOG DAYS
Sunday is Pucks and Paws at the Tsongas Center as UMass Lowell hosts Massachusetts.  Organizers expect to have upwards of 30 dogs in the building.  The Lowell Humane Society will be in attendance for folks to learn about animals available for adoption.  The Dogs on hand will take part in a pre-game Ice Cream Social event, and there will be dog related items and promotions throughout the game.

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