2020 Women’s Beanpot Semifinal Notes: Strong Goaltending Helps Lift Northeastern, BU To Final

BOSTON — The 2020 women’s Beanpot Final is set.

The Northeastern Huskies will take on defending champion Boston University Terriers on Feb. 11 at Walter Brown Arena. The winner will be crowned the Beanpot champion.

Northeastern defeated the Harvard Crimson 3-1 on the back of goalie Aerin Frankel, who stopped 31 of 32 shots en route to the victory. The junior netminder came into Tuesday’s bout boasting a 1.06 goals-against average and .959 save percentage.

“She reads the play extremely well,” Huskies head coach Dave Flint said after the game. “Obviously she’s not a big goaltender so she needs to be able to do that. Also, she’s done really good this year and really improved at finding pucks through traffic.”

Frankel, though, knows she wouldn’t be as solid if it weren’t for her teammates.

“Yeah sometimes it’s hard when the shots come in spurts, but I feel like I’ve gotten kind of used to it,” she said. “Our team does a really good job keeping things in our offensive zone often, so I need to expect that and just stay focused.

Harvard’s goalie Becky Dutton also was strong for her team, stopping 35 shots. And even though it wasn’t enough to advance the Crimson, her head had nothing but high praise for her.

“She is probably the toughest kid we have on our team — and I don’t mean to insult the others on our team because we’ve got a lot of tough kids — But she wills herself t make saves,” Katey Stone said. “She wills herself to put us in a position to be successful and keep us in a game. And she’s battled all kinds of different ailments or injuries here and there throughout her career, and her compete level is just over the top. So we all have a lot of confidence, the kids play really well in front of her. And she’s fun to watch, actually, because it’s not always textbook goaltending, but it’s pretty fun.”

For BU, a team that shut out the Boston College Eagles on Tuesday,  Corine Schroeder stopped every shot that came her way, helping the Terriers to their second consecutive Beanpot Final. And she credited her team for helping her earn the shutout.

“The tough ones were usually there ones where I couldn’t see the puck,” Schroeder said. “They had good net-front presence there. My defense did a good job to clear them out of the way or at least giving a sightline so that I could see the puck and they just did a great job in front of me so that really helped.”

Here are some other notes from Tuesday’s women’s Beanpot semifinals:

— Jesse Compher potted two goals in the Terriers’ win over the Eagles. The junior center hadn’t scored in 11 games coming into Tuesday.

“I’m going to be honest, I kind of blacked out through them,” the junior center said. “But the first one Nara Elia pretty much put it on my tape. I didn’t have to do much work. And then the second one, kind of just got a big rush of speed and saw some open net so I thought, ‘Why not shoot it?’ And it kind of bounced my way, which was nice.”

— BU has a tough task against the Huskies as it is 0-3-0 against Northeastern this season.

— Terriers coach Brian Durocher was happy with the offense he saw Tuesday, but lauded the defense his team showcased through 60 minutes.

“The kids have a mindset to play defense first,” he said. “I’m excited about the four goals but excited again that we defended well.”

— BU will play in its second straight Beanpot Final. The Terriers won their first as a varsity club in 2019.