7 p.m. Friday at Mullins Center, Amherst, Mass.
7 p.m. Saturday at Tsongas Center, Lowell, Mass.

Lowell is fifth in Hockey East with 18 points from 15 games. Amherst is seventh in Hockey East with 14 points from 15 games.

Last three games
Lowell — 0-1 at Providence. 3-2 (ot) at Northeastern, 4-0 vs. Northeastern.
Amherst — 4-3 vs. Vermont, 4-0 vs. Boston College, 3-2 (ot) vs. Vermont.

Prior meetings
Lowell leads Amherst 32-22-6, all-time.

Season series
Lowell trounced Amherst 4-0 at Tsongas Center on Nov. 18, and frankly it could have been a lot uglier than that.

Top scorers
Lowell:
Scott Wilson — 20 GP, 11-9-20 (13 GP, 8-5-13 HE)
Matt Ferreira — 20, 7-13-20 (13, 5-8-13)
David Vallorani — 21, 8-10-18 (14, 5-8-13)
Riley Wetmore — 21, 7-11-18 (14, 4-6-10)
Chad Ruhwedel — 20, 2-16-18 (13, 2-10-12)

Amherst:
TJ Syner — 22 GP, 11-16-27 (15 GP, 8-9-17 HE)
Conor Sheary — 22, 8-17-25 (15, 5-12-17)
Michael Pereira — 21, 9-11-20 (14, 4-6-10)
Danny Hobbs — 19, 9-9-18 (13, 7-4-11)
Branden Gracel — 22, 4-10-14 (15, 2-6-8)

Goaltending
Lowell:
Doug Carr (13-4-0) — 17 GP, 1,034:52, 1.80 GAA/.934 sv% (13 GP, 781:51, 1.92/.932 HE)

Amherst:
Kevin Boyle (5-3-4) — 12 GP, 664:13, 3.07 GAA/.896 sv% (7 GP, 359:44, 3.34/.883 HE)
Jeff Teglia (1-4-1) — 7, 373:28, 3.05/.896 (6, 333:28, 2.70/.907)
Steve Mastalerz (3-1-0) — 6, 308:09, 2.73/.915 (4, 229:14, 3.14/.911)

Team stats
Lowell:
Overall (21 games) — 71 goals for (3.38/gm), 49 goals against (2.33/gm). Power play 21/108 (19.4%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 69/81 (85.2%, 3 SHGF)
Hockey East (15 games) — 47 goals for (3.13/gm), 38 goals against (2.53/gm). Power play 14/72 (19.4%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 50/58 (86.2%, 2 SHGF)

Amherst:
Overall (22 games) — 72 goals for (3.27/gm), 69 goals against (3.14/gm). Power play 18/113 (15.9%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 80/108 (74.1%, 1 SHGF)
Hockey East (15 games) — 44 goals for (2.93/gm), 48 goals against (3.20/gm). Power play 12/84 (14.3%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 56/73 (76.7%, 1 SHGF)

Outlook
This is going to be a war.

Both teams enter with a steely resolve to be terrible on the road, and dominant at home. But the problem is both teams badly need all four points.

If you thought Lowell was bad on the road this year — and believe us, it is — Amherst will see your 4-5-0 in Hockey East play and raise you 0-6-2. That’s bad (and in their one non-league road game, they also lost). It’s so bad, in fact, that we’re starting to think Lowell’s 4-0 drubbing of the Minutemen back in November is the rule, rather than the exception. Amherst has given up 35 goals in eight games, and scored just 21. Somehow that is worse than 24 for and 29 against, which boggles the mind.

And where Lowell has made the Tsongas Center a fortress since the 4-2 loss to Boston College, going 5-0-0 since with 21 goals and allowing just four, Amherst didn’t even falter out of the gate. The Mullins Center has been a veritable Minas Tirith in its imperviousness to attacks from all enemies. The Minutemen are 4-0-2 in Hockey East play at their home rink this season (7-0-3 overall), with near-Lowellian 20-11 goal differential. And these aren’t bad teams they’re running over either: Boston College went there twice and left with a pair of losses, 8-2 on aggregate; BU backed into a 2-2 tie, and Maine drew the hosts by the same score despite leading 2-0 through the first period.

Make no mistake, Lowell will have its work cut out for it on Friday night even gaining a foothold, especially because it will be the team’s fourth game in eight days compared with Amherst’s first since the previous Friday. Amherst isn’t going to have an easier time coming to Lowell, where they already got drilled, and trying to earn points.

The goal for Lowell should be three points at least this weekend, but four would be much better.

Getting four points is always really great. And doing it by winning in overtime on the road, even if we’d have preferred the game been wrapped up with six goals in the first period, is a pretty thrilling way to close it out. And seriously, what a weekend for Derek Arnold.

2) Proving something.

We have long held a belief that few shared: Northeastern just isn’t very good. Even when they were knocking off nationally-ranked out-of-conference teams on the road, we weren’t sold that their sub-.500 record overall was belying what they truly were. So to see them leak goals against Lowell this weekend was in no way surprising, and to see them score just two on Doug Carr made us feel, well, about the same. And look, they lost to this Lowell team at home. Not even Vermont did that, so that’s just about all the indictment we need.

3) Doug Carr.

We feel really bad that Carr had to lose last night. He was strong as he ever is and has now allowed just three goals in the last three Lowell games. How anyone sees someone else in Hockey East as a viable candidate for Goaltender of the Year is so far beyond us we can’t even comprehend it. He should win in a runaway.

Two things that get two thumbs way down:
1) The captain.

A guy we’d like to see show up for a road game at any old point this year: Riley Wetmore. Tuesday was another no-show performance from the junior, who has now gone 11 straight games without a goal. That’s after scoring seven in his first 10 games of the year. Maybe he’s hurt, we don’t know. But there’s no excuse for a kid this good to have no goals in that long. The last time he scored on the road was the weekend of Nov. 11 and 12, when he eviscerated Maine for three goals in two games. Since then, one measly goal, that against Amherst a week later. We’re sure he’s a great leader for the guys — they don’t name juniors captain for no reason — but he needs to get something done on the ice, and soon.

2) Road performances in general. (This is more or less copy-pasted from last week because nothing has really changed. Just to drive the point home.)

For all its dominance at Tsongas Center this year, Lowell hasn’t been good on the road in some time. The River Hawks have just four wins in nine games against Hockey East teams on the road this year, and two of those came in Maine back in early November. They’ve scored 24 goals in those nine games, which seems like a lot until you realize nine of those came, once again, in Orono. More problematically, they’ve conceded 29 in those seven games, compared to just nine in six at home. Awful stuff

Stat of the Week
When you want to talk futility for the River Hawks, the conversation pretty much begins and ends with the Schneider Arena. The River Hawks simply can’t win there.

In fact, to find the last time Lowell picked up two points in Providence, you have to go all the way back to January 15, 2006, more than six years ago. And even then, it took 4:47 of overtime to do it behind Danny O’Brien’s hat trick goal to give the River Hawks the 4-3 win (for which we were in attendance).

Since then, the River Hawks have played eight games at Schneider Arena, going 0-5-3, and scoring just 16 goals (2.0 per game) to Providence’s 24 (3.0). So while garbage games like yesterday’s are frustrating, they’re certainly nothing new.

By contrast, Lowell’s performances at home against the Friars have been decidedly more positive, with the ‘Hawks going 6-1-1, with all those wins coming in a row after they began the 2006-07 season 0-1-1 at Tsongas. In those eight games, they’ve outscored the Friars 33-15 (or 4.13 per to 1.88).

The nightmare rolls on
Friday, guess what, Lowell has another road game! And it’s at Amherst, which is unkillable at home for some reason. That should be fun.

First, they never win in Providence. Ever. It’s just a thing that has always existed and apparently always will. No new coach, it seems, will be able to change that. Second, this was, of course, the third game since Friday for both of these teams, and that kind of turnaround can make for some brutal hockey; both Lowell and Providence seemed to be particularly gassed in the final period. Third, Providence is a well-coached, hard-working team that just got flattened by BU to the tune of 14 goals against and just one for, and that’s going to make a team hungry to prove it’s not anywhere near that bad.

And finally, Lowell is absolutely awful on the road.

We didn’t drag ourselves all the way down to Providence expecting an especially beautiful game. If the third period at Northeastern was any indication, this was a Lowell team content to grind out close games, and if that was their goal, then they accomplished it tonight.

But the way in which the ‘Hawks did it — scoring zero goals despite lengthy stretches on the man advantage that went for naught, never cobbling together anything in the way of sustained pressure for longer than a few shifts, and making a serious of baffling decisions with and without the puck — was exacerbated by the fact that they got precisely (we counted) zero bounces to go their way all night.

That is, we’ll concede, likely a testament to Providence’s approach to games. Again, they are extremely well-coached and for those who watch Bruins broadcasts with any regularity, they certainly defended in “layers.” Few were the times where a River Hawk puck carrier actually had a good one-on-one look against a defender, and their two-man forecheck befuddled the Lowell rush from start to finish. To figure out the number of Grade-A chances the River Hawks earned tonight, you can be a quadruple amputee. No fingers or toes required, they put up the big goose-egg. Providence, to its credit, earned one (when a Lowell defender fell down) and buried it.

Of course, any time you concede a mere 21 shots in a game, 13 of which came in the opening period, you’re doing something right, and most nights, that’s going to be enough to win you games walking away. But before you go thinking that this particular 1-0 game was some sort of goaltending battle, well, stop. Doug Carr made 20 saves, it’s true, and maybe two of them were especially threatening. Meanwhile at the other end of the ice, Alex Beaudry survived a couple of mad goalmouth scrambles, with instances in both the second and third periods leaving Lowell begging for one extra heads-up skater who would have had 24 square feet of net to shoot at if only he’d possessed the wherewithal to be there. But it never happened and Beaudry survived with a 29-save shutout that was far from spectacular.

(There had been some debate headed into this game — between us anyway — as to whether Beaudry would get the start at all. After all, he’d been downright awful this weekend, but in the end it was eventually agreed that the senior, who has so often confounded Lowell at Schneider Arena, would, like the rest of his teammates, at least have something to Nate Leaman. That worked out pretty well for the Friars.)

It is, we must confess, more than a little perplexing how a team can be so lights-out don’t-even-bother-showing-up fantastic at home and so discombobulated on the road. The passes tonight were as they were at Northeastern, which is to say routinely off-target. And the decision-making! Lowell made a couple of nice plays tonight, all of which went for naught, but more often than not tried to finesse where finesse was undue, and force where force wasn’t required.

They started the game timidly and ended up looming in the Providence end for a while, but never really looked especially interested in scoring. The closest they came was in the first period when Steve Buco played a puck about 45 feet over his head off the crossbar and down to Scott Wilson on the opposite side of the crease, but the tap-in was deservedly waved off. And for those scoring at home, Lowell is now 1 for its last 14 on the power play, including a five-minute one tonight stamped out by a Joe Pendenza interference penalty 180 feet from his own net, and two in the last 10 minutes of the game.

There’s no excuse for a team this good to so regularly play this poorly just because it had to get on a bus first then put on some jerseys that are blue instead of white. What happened to the team that swept Maine in Orono? What happened to the one that rebounded constantly at UNH, where a Lowell side hadn’t won in years? What happened to the one that at least hung in there as it did at Northeastern just a few days ago? These are all questions that have to be answered fast. And if someone could have those sent to us posthaste for our perusal, we would be appreciative.

The good news for the River Hawks is that, after Friday’s game at Amherst, which by that time will have been off for a full seven days and therefore will almost certainly win with ease, gives way to a run of six consecutive home games. And what could possibly go wrong then?

7 p.m. Tuesday at Schneider Arena, Providence, R.I.

Lowell is fifth in Hockey East with 18 points from 14 games. Providence is sixth in Hockey East with 15 points from 15 games.

Last three games
Lowell — 3-2 (ot) at Northeastern, 4-0 vs. Northeastern, 2-3 (ot) at Vermont.
PC — 0-8 at BU, 1-6 at BU, 5-2 at Vermont.

Prior meetings
Lowell trails Providence 38-47-10

Season series
These teams have not met this season.

Top scorers
Lowell:
Scott Wilson — 19 GP, 11-9-20 (13 GP, 8-5-13 HE)
Matt Ferreira — 19, 7-13-20 (13, 5-8-13)
David Vallorani — 20, 8-10-18 (14, 5-8-13)
Riley Wetmore — 20, 7-11-18 (14, 4-6-10)
Chad Ruhwedel — 19, 2-16-18 (13, 2-10-12)

PC:
Ross Mauermann — 22 GP, 8-9-17 (15 GP, 7-6-13 HE)
Derek Army — 22, 8-7-15 (15, 6-5-11)
Tim Schaller — 17, 10-4-14 (11, 7-3-10)
Matt Bergland — 22, 3-11-14 (15, 1-10-11)
Myles Harvey — 22, 5-7-12 (15, 5-5-10)

Goaltending
Lowell:
Doug Carr (13-3-0) — 16 GP, 976:14, 1.84 GAA/.933 sv% (12 GP, 723:13, 1.99/.931 HE)

PC:
Alex Beaudry (8-10-2) — 21 GP, 1,117:34, 3.17 GAA/.890 sv% (15 GP, 785:41, 3.05/.892 HE)

Team stats
Lowell:
Overall (20 games) — 71 goals for (3.55/gm), 48 goals against (2.40/gm). Power play 21/104 (20.2%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 67/79 (84.8%, 3 SHGF)
Hockey East (14 games) — 47 goals for (3.36/gm), 37 goals against (2.64/gm). Power play 14/68 (20.6%, 3 SHGA), penalty kill 48/56 (85.7%, 2 SHGF)

PC:
Overall (22 games) — 63 goals for (2.86/gm), 73 goals against (3.32/gm). Power play 20/122 (16.4%, 2 SHGA), penalty kill 99/122 (81.1%, 8 SHGF)
Hockey East (15 games) — 47 goals for (3.13/gm), 50 goals against (3.33/gm). Power play 16/83 (19.3%, 1 SHGA), penalty kill 71/85 (83.5%, 7 SHGF)

Outlook
This is a game that, on paper, Lowell should win walking away. It has lost just three games since the beginning of November and does pretty much everything well. But because this game is on the road, where all three of those losses have come and where Lowell has been pretty bad lately, this is considerably more up in the air.

We don’t think that the scheduling is particularly egregious yet, as this is the third game since Friday for both teams so both should be in the same condition (though perhaps Alex Beaudry will be a little fresher since he got the Sandman-style hook in both games this weekend and played a grand total of 53:23 in those two games). Even as Lowell has won two of its last two road games, they’ve made it more difficult on themselves than they’ve had to. Going to OT against teams like Northeastern, Vermont, and UConn is nothing to be proud of, even if the wins did eventually come. In fact, they shelled up pretty good in the third period of all those games and just let the hosts come at them. Which shouldn’t happen when teams have this big of a talent gap.

Add to that the fact that Providence just got the hockey equivalent of having their pants pulled down in front of the whole school during a campaign speech for student body president, and that this should serve as a sufficient motivator to come out of the gates screaming for some manner of vengeance. Providence is not as bad a team as Northeastern and though it has won just one of its last seven games, Lowell can’t afford to underestimate the Friars, which, given the general quality of the road performances lately, is something we’d hope wouldn’t happen regardless. (e.g. if Vermont can beat Lowell when it mails in a game, anyone can.)

Again, Lowell should win and we expect them to. We’re just anxious to see exactly how they respond to this latest test. Probably — hopefully — well. But who knows these days?

Two other teams also swept this weekend. One was BU, which hided Providence about as badly as one Hockey East team has done in the past couple years, winning 6-1 in Boston on Friday and 8-0 back at Schneider on Saturday. Ugly stuff. Meanwhile, Maine swept BC in Orono 4-3 in OT and 7-4.

The only other two-game series was between Merrimack and UNH, with the visitors winning each. UNH won 2-1 in North Andover Friday and Merrimack returned the favor with a 3-2 overtime win in Durham the following night.

Amherst also beat Vermont at home, 4-3, on Friday but no one cared or noticed.

Our Weekly Awards
Player of the Week
Doug Carr, Lowell (sophomore goalie) — A 4-0 shutout is good and being the only reason your team won 3-2 in overtime is better. Kieran Millan won Defensive Player of the Week from Hockey East (the reason obviously being anti-Lowell bias) but you could have replaced him with a cardboard cutout of Grant Rollheiser and BU still would have won both games walking away. Not that anyone should be surprised that a Lowell player got snubbed for any reason, but  this one is exceptionally stupid.
(Honorable mention: Dan Furlong, Lowell; Derek Arnold, Lowell)

Rookie of the Week
Scott Wilson, Lowell (freshman forward) — It’s getting to the point now that even biased Hockey East media members are calling him the best freshman in the league. Imagine how good a Lowell player has to be to get that.
(Honorable mention: Jake Suter, Lowell)

Ham n Egger of the Weak
Northeastern — Any amount of “they’re better than the record indicates” will hopefully have been washed away after this weekend, as the Huskies slipped three games below .500 overall and would need to win seven straight in Hockey East play to even up their record. It’s not a good team. It is in fact a pretty bad one, buoyed by an exceptional goalie who the River Hawks beat seven times this weekend. So maybe strike exceptional. Change it to lucky. This was a lucky team that can’t win against Hockey East teams on the road (1-6-1) and happened to win a few games against very good OOC opponents. Some NU fans chirped us over the weekend that they’d rather beat Michigan and Notre Dame than RPI and UConn but maybe the team should shift its focus to winning more than four league games in 17 tries. But maybe that’s just us, fans of a team that’s third in the Pairwise, spitballin’ unsympathetically.
(Honorable mention: Providence, BC)

Noteworthy Hockey East Weekly Awards
Scott Wilson was Rookie of the Week for the third time. Doug Carr and Dan Furlong were named top performers.

Weekend Results (Home team bolded)

Friday
Lowell 4, Northeastern 0
BU 6, Providence 1
UNH 2, Merrimack 1
UMass Amherst 4, Vermont 3
Maine 4, BC 3 (OT)

Saturday
Lowell 3, Northeastern 2 (OT)
BU 8, Providence 0
Maine 7, BC 4
Merrimack 3, UNH 2 (OT)

How we voted
For every home game, UMLHockey.com wants to know who your three stars of the game for the River Hawks are. All this voting is counted up and given as the UMLHockey.com Player of the Year award at the end of the season, so let’s take it super-seriously and just see if we can’t get those vote totals boosted this year, eh?

1) Dan Furlong
2) Scott Wilson
3) Doug Carr

There wasn’t very much that was pretty or even especially likable about the way Lowell competed for most of the game’s 62:50 tonight, except to say that it won the hockey game and was able to answer the bell each time Northeastern scored.

But the ride to that win, and to those tying goals, was anything but pleasant.

The last time these teams met in Matthews Arena, it was about as evenly-played a contest as one could imagine and a bad decision by Norm Bazin ended up costing the River Hawks a chance at a point. Tonight, the Huskies, clearly humbled by their coach all but calling them losers in the press as a result of Lowell blowing past them with alarming ease at Tsongas Center, brought a far more competitive edge to the game.

In fact, though Lowell has clearly been the better team all season long, it’s very safe to say that Northeastern was the better team tonight. They controlled play for long stretches in ways that Lowell could not, even despite the River Hawks earning myriad power play chances in the first two periods in part due to the Huskies’ compete level being probably dialed up just a bit too high.

And power plays were actually where all of the damage in the first period was done, despite NU having none. The Huskies’ opened the scoring with an ugly shorthanded goal by Braden Pimm (originally called no goal but vindicated by video review), who blocked a Chad Ruhwedel pass attempt at the right side of the Lowell blue line and took off. Ruhwedel seemed to have the play under control but knocked the puck back to Doug Carr, who never completely controlled it and both Pimm and the puck slid into the net, though not in that order. That power play, Lowell’s second, went by the wayside, but the same could not be said of the third, on which Scott Wilson scored his third goal of the weekend and locked up TIIL Rookie of the Week honors (spoiler alert) 4:12 later on a rocket knee-drop one-timer that, if we may return to aesthetics for a moment, put sunsets over the Grand Canyon to shame.

The first period ended 1-1 and both teams probably had to feel pretty good about things. Northeastern had certainly had the better of the chances despite the score being tied and theoretically, a tightening up of the team discipline could allow for more wiggle room and more of a chance to open another lead. Lowell was tied despite not having played especially well in any part of the ice except at the dot, and had responded to what could have been a very disheartening shorthanded goal against by scoring less than five minutes later and leaning on Carr to get them out of the period further unscathed.

As it turned out, though, Northeastern’s intermission gave it a little more jump than the visitors, because Garrett Vermeersch scored 32 seconds in on a Vinny Saponari rebound to once again stake the Huskies to a one-goal lead. It was the result of bad defending by the River Hawks in two spots back-to-back but it counted and the River Hawks looked a bit vulnerable all of a sudden. But where they could have wilted — again, they weren’t playing especially well, at least in terms of driving possession — they instead steeled themselves and put together a few decent minutes that culminated in a nice goal from Colin Wright, his first of the year, off the rebound from a Terrence Wallin shot (and Wilson picked up assist on it). Once again, this was a case of Lowell responding to the pressure applied by an inferior team taking advantage of the fact that Lowell is not very good at home, and once again those were the only goals of the period because Lowell could gain no real sustained pressure and it was defending extraordinarily well.

We’re not sure who, exactly, keeps stats at Northeastern, but they seem to be grossly incompetent. Lowell was only credited with 12 blocked shots in the game, and just five in the second period, which seems like the kind of absurdism Albert Camus would only have written after a three-day opium bender. If Lowell didn’t have at least double that total for the game in actual reality we would be shocked. And that’s in addition to their defense doing a lot of good to dissuade Northeastern from taking the shots it wanted. Those that did eventually filter through to Carr were gobbled up as expected, and he would brook no more pucks getting past him in this one.

And that’s not for lack of effort on the Huskies’ part. The third period was more of what we saw in Vermont last weekend: the vastly inferior home team leaning heavily on the River Hawks — this time bombarding Carr with 13 shots to their seven (four of which came in the space of a frantic five seconds as Chris Rawlings flopped around his crease like an asphyxiating trout) — and generally presenting the very imminent threat of a Foreman-like knockout punch lurking around the corner from every lost defensive zone faceoff, one which would bring the reality of having lost two of three games to the two worst teams in the league crashing hard and heavy down around the River Hawks. But Carr, ever-reliable, was equal to every test and so it was that the game went to overtime, as Northeastern’s announcers laughably called out the River Hawks for “playing for the tie.”

Things in the extra frame were more or less even. Both teams were prodding and poking at the opposing defense and really gaining no purchase in their attempts to establish any kind of possession in the attacking zone. Northeastern managed just one shot in overtime before Mike Budd hoofed a hopeful puck up through the neutral zone. And, in a case of calamitously bad fielding that would make the Cleveland Indians of the film Major League wince, a forward ranged backward to try to bat the puck out of the air as a defenseman ran up to play it. Baseball fundamentals dictate that the guy coming in, in this case the defender, should call off the man in front, but this being hockey, we’re not sure they were familiar with this protocol. They collided, both falling short of the puck, and leaving it bouncing at the feet of Anthony “He’s better than Chad Ruhwedel” Bitetto. It was here that Derek Arnold swooped in and plucked the puck from beneath a perplexed and overmatched Bitetto, broke in alone on Rawlings and iced the game with more or less the same move he used the night before.

The River Hawks won and we got the four points we asked for. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t convincing, but all Ws on the schedule look like Picassos at the end of the day.

Now it’s on to Providence in just three days, and we hope this team finds it road legs in that time.

For their part and seemingly in answer, the Huskies, a team about whose greatness despite its position in the standings we’d been hearing all week from a bunch of delusional pompom-waving dullards, spent the following 60 minutes repeatedly dropping the ball despite being given ample opportunity to make a positive impression of any kind on us or indeed the game in which they were competing.

And really, it’s no surprise. This is, after all, a Northeastern team that currently sits ninth in the league and is only regarded as anything more than “embarrassingly bad” because it somehow won an admirable series of out-of-conference road games. But here in Hockey East, teams know their little tricks and traps considerably better, and the River Hawks, so monstrous as they are on home ice, was not to be victimized by a team this bad in Lowell. Four goals for and none against later, we really only gained affirmation of what any right-thinking person saw coming down the pike miles ago.

It would be a little disingenuous of us to advance our normal position in any game that Lowell wins by three goals or more and/or secures a shutout (that the River Hawks ran the show from start to finish) because it simply isn’t true. What is true is that the River Hawks cashed in on the majority of their stronger chances tonight, leaving a trail of hit posts and whiffed-on shot attempts in their wake, and played more dogged hockey particularly when in pursuit of the puck they didn’t have.

Problematically, that was fairly often.

Lowell scored a little less than six minutes into the game, on a beautiful behind-the-back no-look pass from Joe Pendenza to super-rookie Scott Wilson — more on him in a minute — and never looked back but that wasn’t for lack Northeastern’s futile attempts at trying. The Huskies actually possessed the puck quite often in this game but were softer on it than the fur on several of the cuddlier canines in attendance. That is to say, the Huskies carried the puck often but were easily dissuaded from doing anything at all with it by the slightest bit of contact. They also made tragically dumb decisions when given the space to do so, which happened routinely enough for our liking.

In the end, Lowell had the better chances in the first period and left with a 1-0 margin in its favor, but one couldn’t help but think Northeastern, which played a strong game in these teams’ prior meeting and was looking to snap a two-game league losing streak (much like the River Hawks, in both cases, actually), had something up its sleeve.

But it didn’t. Instead, the Huskies rolled over and let Lowell dictate the period that proved to be the ultimate difference in the game. They gave up the insurance marker just 1:27 into the middle period as Derek Arnold abused Dan Cornell along the left wing, beat him inside and went around the far pad of Chris Rawlings, which shouldn’t happen to a guy who’s 6-foot-5. But then, Rawlings was dreadful all night, allowing four goals on 32 shots.

Shots in the period were 10 apiece between the teams but that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Northeastern had five in one power play very early on, but more disconcertingly allowed a shorthanded goal to Dan Furlong within that same time frame as Lowell stretched its lead to three. And here we must praise Furlong, whose shot on a two-on-one with Matt Ferreira was absolutely wired over Rawlings’ shoulder to the near post. For a kid who had four career points going into the game to come out with three in the second period alone was great two watch (he added a pair of assists, obviously) and tells of the quality of game he brought to the rink last night. If he can have more contests like this in the future, we’re going to be very happy indeed.

And also of note was that this game marked Ferreira’s return to the lineup after missing the game at Vermont with injury. We suppose we had begun to take for granted just how much of a contribution he brings to the rink every night, because given the way he played (two assists, plus-3, strong on the puck all night) and his production against the Huskies, we doubt the River Hawks blow that lead in Burlington. But having him back is going to be massive for this team going forward.

Wilson scored the game’s last goal with all the lethality he displayed on its first, this time becoming the benefactor of a chip-ahead from Furlong and scoring effortlessly on the breakaway with just 17 seconds left in the period.

The final period saw the Huskies begin to piece their attack together but here Doug Carr, who made 28 saves and picked up his third shutout of the year, was equal to all tasks and, along with a Josh Holmstrom breakaway that drew a penalty, staunched the only real Northeastern threat of the game, an extended 5-on-3.

Northeastern fans for some reason chose to view this game as a referendum on these teams’ personnel. “Is Rawlings better than Carr?” “Is Bitetto better than Ruhwedel?” “Is Karlsson better than Wilson?” By any metric you choose to apply to this game in particular, and especially if you choose to extrapolate out what this means for whether the Huskies are better than the record states, we think you’ll find that the answer is a resounding “no.”

Were there things for the River Hawks to work on here? Of course. They didn’t possess the puck enough, as we said, and took too many penalties, as we implied. Their finishing was lethal and their shotblocking was admirable. This was the opposite of the game at Vermont in terms of the team’s desire to compete. But we all could have guessed at that. Tsongas Center is a fortress Lowell will defend to its last.

The real questions come, and will hopefully be answered, tonight. On the road. In a building where Lowell has already lost. Last night gave us reason think they possess the ability to close this season series out in style.

7 p.m. Friday at Tsongas Center, Lowell, Mass.
7 p.m. Saturday at Matthews Arena, Boston, Mass.

Lowell is sixth in Hockey East with 14 points from 12 games. Northeastern is ninth in Hockey East with 10 points from 15 games.

Last three games
Lowell — 2-3 (ot) at Vermont, 6-4 vs. Russian Red Stars (exh.), 4-3 (ot) at UConn.
NU — 1-2 vs. Boston College, 3-4 vs. Boston University, 4-7 vs. U.S. Under-18 Team (exh.).

Prior meetings
Lowell lost 3-2 at Northeastern earlier this year because of a terrible coaching decision.

Season series
Lowell leads Northeastern 53-40-7, all-time.

Top scorers
Lowell:
David Vallorani — 18 GP, 8-10-18 (12 GP, 5-8-13 HE)
Matt Ferreira — 17, 7-11-18 (11, 5-6-11)
Riley Wetmore — 18, 7-10-17 (12, 4-5-9)
Scott Wilson — 17, 8-8-16 (11, 5-4-9)
Chad Ruhwedel — 17, 2-14-16 (11, 2-8-10)

NU:
Steve Quailer — 18 GP, 7-12-19 (13 GP, 4-6-10 HE)
Ludwig Karlsson — 18, 8-10-18 (13, 8-5-13)
Vinny Saponari — 20, 3-12-15 (15, 1-10-11)
Braden Pimm — 18, 8-6-14 (13, 2-3-5)
Garrett Vermeersch — 20, 4-9-13 (15, 1-6-7)

Goaltending
Lowell:
Doug Carr (11-3-0) — 14 GP, 853:43, 1.97 GAA/.928 sv% (10 GP, 600:42, 2.20/.924 HE)

NU:
Chris Rawlings (8-8-3) — 19 GP, 1,131:10, 2.39 GAA/.928 sv% (14 GP, 826:10, 2.61/.925 HE)

Team stats
Lowell:
Overall (18 games) — 64 goals for (3.56/gm), 46 goals against (2.56/gm). Power play 20/94 (21.3%, 2 SHGA), penalty kill 60/72 (83.3%, 2 SHGF)
Hockey East (12 games) — 40 goals for (3.33/gm), 35 goals against (2.92/gm). Power play 13/58 (22.4%, 2 SHGA), penalty kill 41/49 (83.7%, 1 SHGF)

NU:
Overall (20 games) — 59 goals for (2.95/gm), 52 goals against (2.60/gm). Power play 9/90 (10.0%, 4 SHGA), penalty kill 75/95 (78.9%, 3 SHGF)
Hockey East (15 games) — 38 goals for (2.53/gm), 43 goals against (2.87/gm). Power play 5/59 (8.5%, 2 SHGA), penalty kill 51/66 (77.3%, 2 SHGF)

Outlook
Last week we said that Lowell absolutely positively had to win at Vermont. Because the River Hawks were (and still are, despite the loss) that much better than the Catamounts.

This week we say that Lowell absolutely positively has to win both games against Northeastern. Not just because the River Hawks are (despite an earlier loss this season) that much better than the Huskies. But because the season is riding on it.

It’s a little bit comical, we guess. Saying that the season is riding on a two-game home-and-home series with a ninth-place team in mid-January. But it’s at least symbolically true. The Huskies are, by and large, and despite what their rockhead supporters will tell you, not appreciably better than Vermont. They have a good goaltender and not much else. No offense. Atrocious power play. Bad penalty kill. And yet they beat the River Hawks the last time out for reasons we don’t care to explore again for the sake of our sanity.

But the River Hawks, who once looked like a mortal lock to pull home ice with ease and maybe even compete for the league, have been decidedly average since beating Boston College at Tsongas Center in early December. They were punchless against Northeastern in the final game before break, then brought some competition to Connecticut and used almost all of it against RPI (requiring OT to beat UConn for some awful reason), and then played about half a good game against a garbage Vermont team. Two wins from four straight games against teams that are all well below .500, with both losses coming in Hockey East play, is not the way teams which want to be bound for the NCAA tournament handle things.

And so the reason Lowell has to beat Northeastern twice this weekend is also because these two games are as much about re-establishing Lowell as a team worthy of consideration for the praise heaped on it in the final weeks of the first half as it is the four points, which Lowell now officially needs to earn.

We won’t be happy with anything less than a sweep. This is more than pride and revenge we’re talking about.

By the time Friday rolls around, it will have been about 42 days since we last saw live Hockey East play at Tsongas Center. That’s 1,008 hours. It’s 60,480 minutes. And it’s close to 3.63 million seconds. In short, too many. But that will all change on Friday and we couldn’t be more excited.

2) Dogs.

No, not the mangy and probably worm-riddled specimens that will scrape their sorry hides into Tsongas Center on Friday and play our River Hawks, but the lovable, cuddly guys that will be coming as part of the school’s Pucks and Paws promotion. Bring your dog to the game if you have one because the proceeds from the dog’s ticket goes to the Lowell Humane Society. Even if you don’t have a dog, you should still give money to the Lowell Humane Society because they probably need it more than you need an extra beer at the game on Friday. Be smart out there.

3) Russians.

Lowell officially announced that its long-rumored Russian recruit would be joining the team for the second half of the season. Dmitry Sinitsyn is a 17-year-old, big defenseman and he’s supposed to be pretty good. So good, in fact, that he never played a second of junior hockey in the United States. He went right from U-16s to Lowell and is expected to play this season. He’ll be the only ’94 birthdate in the entire NCAA, which is pretty cool. One suspects that he would have gotten significantly more interest from other Division 1 schools in another season (or perhaps gone the Russian junior/KHL route) but Lowell swooped in and grabbed him while he was waiting for a new student visa. Can’t wait to see the kid play.

Two things that make us tearful:
1) Losing to Vermont.

It is seriously terrible. Only losses to Amherst make us sadder.

2) Road performances in general.

For all its dominance at Tsongas Center this year, Lowell hasn’t been good on the road in some time. The River Hawks have just three wins in seven games against Hockey East teams on the road this year, and two of those came in Maine back in early November. They’ve scored 21 goals in those seven games, which seems like a lot until you realize nine of those came, once again, in Orono. More problematically, they’ve conceded 26 in those seven games, compared to just nine in five at home. Can things get better for Lowell on the road? Of course. But the fact is that it currently needs four road wins just to get back to .500 away from home, and that’s a big ask.

Stat of the Week
With the previous negative from the weekend in mind, we decided to take a look at some of Lowell’s most successful seasons to see if this trend is at all unprecedented. After all, the River Hawks, with nine home games left on the regular-season schedule and 15 overall, it would take a formidable meltdown to prevent this team getting to 20 wins.

And in the rest of the Lowell’s history as a Division 1 program, there have only been eight other 20-win teams. So have any of them ever been this bad on the road in league play? In short, not really. The average Lowell 20-win team averaged 14.13 points on the road in Hockey East play from 12.63 road games per season, or a .560 winning percentage, which isn’t great, but it’s miles better than current River Hawks.

Lowell’s best-ever road season among those considered came in 1995-96, the last year it qualified for the NCAA tournament. The record away from home that year was 8-3-1.

But there is some good news here. Two of the Lowell teams that won 20 games finished below .500 on the road. The most recent was in 2005-06, when Lowell went 5-7-1 on the road with a minus-5 goal differential. The better news is that the other team made the NCAA tournament in 1987-88, even as it went 5-7-0 with a minus-3 goal differential away from Tully Forum.

So all hope is not lost quite yet.

We have very deep concerns
As you can see, we’re trying to stay positive to some extent but if Lowell were to stumble this weekend we might officially hit the panic button. Thoughts and opinions on that decision are welcomed.

But at least normalcy returned on Sunday when Providence, which earlier in the week had lost 1-0 to visiting UNH, brained the Catamounts 5-2 on Sunday. UNH, meanwhile, hosted and smoked Dartmouth Saturday, 4-1.

Northeastern was another team that struggled mightily, losing to BU 4-3 at home then dropping a 2-1 decision to BC at Fenway Park, because you can never ever have enough games there. Oddly, the Eagles’ win came after it got trounced at home 4-0 by Amherst. BU completed its small weekend sweep over other Beanpot schools by downing Harvard, also 4-3 (though this in overtime) at the Bright Center in Cambridge.

And in the only complete series of the weekend, Merrimack took three points from Maine in North Andover, winning 6-2 and drawing 2-all.

Our Weekly Awards
Player of the Week
Karl Stollery, Merrimack (senior defenseman) — This is the first week in a long, long time we cannot in good conscience list a Lowell player. That is because even if a Lowell player had played out of his mind and scored a million goals, a loss to Vermont, which is a terrible hockey team, would disqualify him. So this jerk from Merrimack gets it because he got a goal and three assists.
(Honorable mention: Ryan Flanigan, Merrimack; Wade Megan, BU)

Rookie of the Week
Garrett Vermeersch, Northeastern (freshman forward or whatever, probably) — Again, who cares about this idiot, but at least his crappy team didn’t lose to Vermont.
(Honorable mention: Ross Mauerman, Providence)

Ham n Egger of the Weak
Lowell — Ugh.
(Honorable mention: Lowell; Lowell; Lowell; Lowell; Lowell; Lowell)

Noteworthy Hockey East Weekly Awards
Doug Carr was named a top performer which is better than any River Hawk deserves.

Weekend Results (Home team bolded)
Wednesday
UNH 1, Providence 0

Friday
Vermont 3, Lowell 2 (OT)
UMass Amherst 4, BC 0
Merrimack 6, Maine 2
BU 4, Northeastern 3

Saturday
BC 2, Northeastern 1

Sunday
Providence 5, Vermont 2
Merrimack 2, Maine 2 (OT)
BU 4, Harvard 3 (OT)
UNH 4, Dartmouth 1

How we voted
For every home game, UMLHockey.com wants to know who your three stars of the game for the River Hawks are. All this voting is counted up and given as the UMLHockey.com Player of the Year award at the end of the season, so let’s take it super-seriously and just see if we can’t get those vote totals boosted this year, eh?

No home game so we didn’t vote.