Northeastern & Harvard - MIH - 1/13/12 & 1/14/12

BU vs. Northeastern Men's Ice Hockey, 1/13/12 - Matthews Arena, Boston, MA & BU vs. Harvard Men's Ice Hockey, 1/14/12 - Bright Hockey Center, Boston, MA

Bottom Line: BU beats Northeastern 4-3 / BU beats Harvard 4-3 (OT)

The Memories: Two huge come from behind wins for the Terriers / Chris Connolly finally finds the back of the net (twice) versus Harvard / The Dog Pound steals another Hockey East arena and makes it our house, and then doesn't even need to try at the ECAC arena

New year, new games, and what seems like a new team.  That Notre Dame game was rough. Even just watching it on TV I was feeling it.

But onto 2012, the year without Trivino or Coyle. And my oh my, what a sweet year it may be.

This weekend all the little Terriers were still on break but kids that find Boston more exciting than home and own a BU jersey decided to show up to two big road games.

The first was Friday night at Matthews Arena versus Northeastern and Vinny. Oh Vinny. Anyways, the Northeastern students were loud as usual until, oh wait, we started winning and then they shut right up as usual.  I can say that the good ol' Dog Pound was not letting up on the chants and the Vinny cheers even when we ended the first down by two. Our chants, as per usual, were more creative (Parker sucks...that's cute NU, anything else you'd like to share with the class?) and our resilience was there. So even though those Northeastern kids had fun with their vuvuzelas, bullhorns, D Fence sign (what the), and had approximately 300% more penguins than we did, I'm pretty sure we still came out on top.

That's ridiculous, by the way. Matthews (in my small scope of what I've seen of HE arenas in person) has just a great hockey atmosphere. Aside from the fact that I just hate the North - Eastern chant, those kids can get loud. For the most part they stay loud and antagonizing until, like I said, they start losing. But even then there's still a handful of kids who don't give up. And as stupid as their signs are (I'm glad you love Dongara and Bitetto, I do, but really?) at least they've got some. Overall that can be a damn intimidating place to play, but thanks to the Dog Pound keeping up with the volume and the creativity (and giving Rawlings a warm welcome every time he came to visit) I'm pretty sure we showed the Huskies that they can just shut the hell up.

Now Harvard, by contrast, is not really that scary to play at, if at all. Aside from the fact that it's another "Boston" team which almost always makes for a fun game, Bright Hockey Center really isn't bright after all. I don't care if your students are on break. So are ours. And those 4 screaming chicks you brought don't count. I'm sorry, but the Harvard "fans" were literally pathetic.

Dog Pound 23423534526234 million, Harvard -12 on this one.

And despite the fact that we had no competition from the stands, it was good to see us keep the energy up. Almost worse than getting beat is losing steam halfway through the game. I feel like that's what happens to us at home in Agganis, which is also pretty lame but whatever. If we didn't keep cheering,  the team couldn't have made a comeback and Garrett Noonan wouldn't have scored the game winning goal in OT. Yeah. That's right. I'm pretty sure hockey skills had nothing to do with the last three goals. That was straight Dog Pound adrenaline. You're welcome, boys.

Overall, a solid weekend for a team that really needed it. I'm glad I got back to school early to take a two night trip across the street and then over the river. I'm glad that 30 some odd kids did that as well. We get to say we saw Vinny first and that we are missing nothing and then we saw ChrisCo shake off the demons and get not one, but two beauties.


Basically, next year, the year after that, and all years after that, if you're at this school, give up your last weekend of Winter Break and come to some games. Also consider giving Spring Break the middle finger and taking a road (flight?) trip to see your team. You won't regret it. I'm pretty sure your homeland is nothing compared to what we got to see this weekend.

And for the rest of us - still plenty more road trips (BUs trips? T trips?) to go around. If you don't go to an away game by the end of the year, I'm pretty sure you lose. At life. Hope you don't get too jealous of our memories.