Weekend With The Riverhawks, A Look at World Juniors

BU looks to wrap up the semester on a high note as they play a home and home with the Lowell Riverhawks this weekend. The two teams will be at Tsongas Center tonight, while the series concludes back on Comm Ave Saturday night at Agganis. 

From The Vault
Former Terrier goalie Sean Maguire stops Lowell's CJ Smith
on a breakaway in the 2016 Hockey East Quarterfinals. Lowell
won the game 3-2 and the series 2-0.
(Photo by Matt Dresens)

Lowell’s 0-3-0 start to the season surprised a lot of folks. For the last five years, Lowell has been in the conference championship game, winning three times (2013, 2014 and 2017) and have been at the top of the league standings year in and year out. 

The Riverhawks currently sit in sole position of sixth place in Hockey East with a 5-5-0 league record. All five of those league wins came in the month of November, where Lowell went 5-1-0. Last weekend, the strong run came to a screeching halt as Bentley bucked the Riverhawks 3-2 (OT), despite getting outshot 27-13.  

A year ago, BU and Lowell split their season series. BU won the first game 4-2 at home at the end of January and Lowell rebound for a 3-2 win at Tsongas in mid-February. 

Scouting the Riverhawks

Sophomore Ryan Lohin has paced the Lowell offensive attack thus far. In 15 games played, the Tampa Bay draft pick has registered five goals and nine assists for 14 points. Kenny Hausinger is second with 12 points by way of five goals and seven assists. Senior John Edwardh is arguable Lowell’s most potent scorer and has five goals and nine assists this year. Last season, Edwardh notched 39 points and is Lowell’s top returning scorer from a year ago. 

In goal, Christoffer Hernberg has stolen the starting job from Tyler Wall. Hernberg is 8-2-0 on the year and holds a .939 save percentage and a 1.64 goals against average. He was recently named Hockey East goalie of the month for November. 

World Junior Prelim Rosters Announced

Over the course of last week, several countries started releasing their preliminary World Junior rosters invitations. All in all, BU had five players selected from three different countries. Patrick Harper, Jake Oettinger, and Brady Tkachuk all received invites from USA Hockey. Dante Fabbro was selected by team Canada and Kasper Kotkansalo for Finland. 

One surprising name left off the US roster was Chad Krys, who played in the tournament as 17-year-old in 2016 and was on the preliminary roster last year. Krys is arguably playing the best hockey of his career right now, with four goals and ten assists thus far. 

“You feel like its one of your children,” mentioned coach Quinn. “Obviously you’re always hopeful and you always think very highly of them. Its disappointing for Chad, but one thing that him and I have talked about is you just move past it, and he gets to spend Christmas at home. There's always a silver lining there.” 

The final rosters will be released in the coming weeks after each team holds their evaluation camp prior to the tournament in Buffalo, starting on December 26th.