BOSTON – Although UMass has the highest seed out of the three Hockey East teams in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, it may very well be the Northeastern Huskies that give the conference its best chance to advance to the Frozen Four.

The recent selection show revealed that the Minutemen had drawn the fourth overall seed in the tournament, making them the top seed in the Manchester region, where they’ll face Harvard in the round of 16. 

If they advance, they’ll play the winner of Notre Dame versus Clarkson.

The remaining two Hockey East teams were both assigned to the Providence region, including the Friars themselves, even though Brown is the host team for the event and Providence is therefore not required to be playing there. The Friars drew a favorable Saturday afternoon matchup against the region’s top seed, Minnesota State University-Mankato, which essentially amounts to a home game despite being the lower seed.

As for the Huskies, they’ve drawn an opening-round matchup against Cornell, which earned an at-large bid following a controversial defeat at the hands of Clarkson in the ECAC Championship game. The winners of those two games will play each other on Sunday for the opportunity to advance to Buffalo to play for a national championship starting April 11.

Northeastern is one of the hottest teams in the country; the Huskies have won 11 out of their last 13 games after capturing their second consecutive Beanpot on Feb. 11, including a clean sweep in the Hockey East playoffs—as seen on FloHockey, of course—that saw them run the table against Maine in the first round and then defeat Boston University and Boston College on back-to-back nights at TD Garden.

They now have a school-record 27 wins this season, plus the hardware to back it up.

“It’s big, it’s big for our group,” said Brandon Hawkins. “We put a set of goals in front of us when the season started with the Beanpot, Hockey East and then the national title. And, when we bring home hardware like that, it’s just a showing of how good our club is and how much we’ve come together in the past year.”

That momentum, not to mention having one of the best goaltenders in the country in 19-year-old sophomore Cayden Primeau, has the potential to take them very far. With standouts from last year’s team like Nolan Stevens, Dylan Sikura and Adam Gaudette having all since headed to pro hockey, it may very well be Primeau that can carry them further than that group did; the 2018 installment of the Huskies fell to Michigan in the opening round of last year’s tournament.

“Everyone knew that we had doubters at the beginning of the year because of losing the big three like that,” Primeau said. “It definitely hurt. But, in the locker room, we knew that we have a good group and we wanted to prove all of those people wrong. Winning a Beanpot again and then winning Hockey East, it shows how this club is; when we buy into playing the right way and play how the coaches want us to play, that’s when we’re successful.”

Head coach Jim Madigan echoed similar sentiments.

“We’re a different team, but we still have good players,” he said. “We lost some forwards, but we had six guys with more than 10 goals this year as forwards, so we knew our offense was going to be spread out, but we did that. There were times this year we didn’t score as much as we’d like, but we’ve got a goalie who can keep us in every game and we’ve got five or six defensemen back there who know how to defend. It’s just a confidence. It’s a quiet confidence, it’s hard to describe…but they really don’t get rattled.”

Mike Ashmore has 17 years of experience covering professional and college sports. You can follow him on all social media channels at @mashmore98.