“That was huge. He’s a really well-liked guy in the locker room,” Northeastern coach Jerry Keefe said of Walsh. “That was a huge boost for our entire team, because he’s been playing really well. We talked about it in a meeting the other day. We said ‘You’re really close, and a lot of times those guys end up finding a way to get a big goal at the right time, and that’s exactly what he did.”
A pair of locals gave NU the early lead when Aidan McDonough took a cross-ice pass from Bridgewater native Cam Lund and beat Arsenii Sergeev glove side for a 1-0 advantage 10:36 into the first period. It was the 13th goal of the season for the Milton native, who celebrated by pretending to toss a baseball up in the air and swinging his stick to drive it over the Green Monster.
“I played baseball in high school, so I think it might have cleared the Monster from where I was standing,” McDonough joked, adding that he remembered when former NU forward Adam Gaudette pulled the same trick in 2017. McDonough added that he was at the game in 2010 for Boston University forward David Warsofsky’s similar celebration.
It would be a good day for local skaters in both games, playing in front of an announced crowd of 22,501. UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh sent Westwood’s Tom Messineo and Bridgewater’s Jake Flynn as the defensive pairing for the puck drop.
In the nightcap between Boston College and Massachusetts, BC coach Greg Brown had Westwood’s Christian O’Neill and Boxborough’s Cam Burke on the first line for the opening faceoff of the Eagles’ 4-2 win. Burke delivered with his first two goals of the season to turn a 1-1 game into a 3-1 lead.
“It’s their play that got them there,” said Brown. “They do so many things right all over the ice, the little things that are never in the stat sheet, that’s why we’re so happy for Cam that he had a big presence on the stat sheet as well because we feel like he’s been helping us win.
“We love when he’s on the ice. Even though there was a zero on that goal line, it didn’t make us hesitate for a second about getting him on the ice because he finds so many ways to help us win.”
The big night from Burke, a graduate transfer from Notre Dame, happened to occur the day before his birthday.
“I had a bunch of family and friends here, so to score in front of them is always special, never mind doing it in…
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