Know Your Enemy: The "Your Mascot Has Brain Damage" Edition

BU Goes to Worst Arena on Earth to Play Northeastern

That's right ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year again, when Your Terriers are forced to skate across town to the shoebox on Huntington Avenue, Matthews Arena.

Northeastern is a shadow of the team they once were, more so than even BU is.  They are 2-3 overall and 0-2 in Hockey East play so far this year.

So what will happen when BU goes to Husky Town this weekend?

The Terriers lost a ton of talent in the off-season, but no singular departure in all of Hockey East was as significant as that of goaltender Brad Thiessen.

Yes, lucky for BU fans, the Terriers will never have to deal with that ugly mug again.  He is still haunting our dreams however, by trying to challenge everyone's favorite underdog, Johnny Curry, for the goalie job in Scranton.

Thiessen played every last game for the Huskies last season, putting up a ridiculous 2.12 GAA, good enough to land him in the Hobey Hat Trick with Colin Wilson and Matt Gilroy.  In the two years before last, he was the hard luck goalie of a bad team, going 27-34 despite averaging about 2.5 goals per game allowed, and turning away about 92% of the shots he saw.

He was really, really good.

He led the Huskies to one of their best seasons in team history.  They tied the team record for wins and Hockey East wins, as Thiessen was named Hockey East player of the year.  They appeared in their first NCAA tournament since 1994 and the fourth in team history.

But the Huskies choked it away a little bit down the stretch, losing their two biggest games of the season.  They fell 3-2 in overtime to the Riverhawks in the Hockey East semis, but had a chance to continue their season with a first round NCAA game against Cornell.  NU even took a 2-1 lead into the third period of that game before giving up the tying goal with 4 minutes to play, then lost the game when Evan Barlow of Cornell scored with 18 seconds to play.  Heartbreak hotel (and joy for BU fans everywhere who hate the arrogant NU fans everywhere).





Still makes me smile.

Anyway, the failure of NU last year didn't discourage them from a cute attempt at making life better for their miserable fans.  As we reported here at TMA earlier this year, NU renovated the pit they call home to try to make sure we don't contract as many diseases when we walk in the place.

It's a new year, and the Huskies have picked up where they left off last season.  After giving fans hope by opening the season by splitting a few games with Colorado College.  However, it's been rocky since then, especially in Hockey East games.  Most recently, NU dropped games to New Hampshire and U-Mass Lowell.

They have spread out the scoring (or just haven't scored much at all) among several players, but most likely the biggest threat for NU is junior forward Wade Macleod.  Macleod has 62 points in 78 games through his first two seasons with the Huskies.  Macleod was all of the offense for NU in their loss to New Hampsire, scoring two goals.


The Huskies also found a decent replacement for Thiessen in net.  Freshman Chris Rawlings has started all five games for NU, putting up a 3.01 GAA and a .911 save percentage.

I don't care what his stat line is.  He's no Thiessen, and he is beatable.

This game is very important to me.  I hate Northeastern.  I despise the hell out of them.  Their fans are Satan incarnate.




As you can tell, they're loud, they're obnoxious, and they love banging on metal objects for no discernible reason.  They also traditionally think they're team is much better than it actually is.

This is a game that BU can win, should win, and needs to win if it wants to get on the right track for the 09-10 season.  If you can get to Matthews for the game, get there and be as loud as you possibly can be and put these Huskies fans in their place.