Hockey East monthly awards: Love for Goumas, not for plus-minus ratings

Hockey East named its players of the month yesterday, and two very familiar faces - not to mention a third soon-to-be familiar face - were handed honors their teams would have liked them to be winning months ago.

After a torrid start to the month in which his offensive totals were padded but his plus-minus took a huge hit, Maine’s Gustav Nyquist was named Hockey East Athletic Republic Player of the Month. In the month’s first weekend, Nyquist scored four goals against UNH, including a hat trick in the team’s Friday night defeat. Perhaps most memorable, however, was when he lost an edge and missed an empty net with just over 45 seconds to go in a tie game before Paul Thompson banked the game-winner off of Dan Sullivan’s right shoulder and into the net 30 seconds later. For the month, Nyquist totalled 10 goals and four assists and had five multi-point performances.



It hasn’t been a year full of sunshine and butterflies for BU’s Kieran Millan, but after a month in which the Terrier netminder didn’t lose a single conference game (5-0-1), the junior was recognized as the Pure Hockey Goaltender of the Month. Millan allowed nine goals in six conference games (1.50 GAA) including a shutout on February 19th at Providence and recorded a save percentage of .952 in conference play. The obvious blemish? Allowing eight goals in the Beanpot - including five to lowly Harvard in BU’s first Beanpot consolation game loss since 1980.



Finally, proving that quantity does matter more than quality, UNH’s Kevin Goumas took home the Pro Ambitions Rookie of the Month award - after winning the weekly version three out of four times in February. Goumas had a game-winning goal in UNH’s February 4th victory over Maine and registered the game-tying goal in Friday’s 2-2 draw with Northeastern. He finished the month with 4-7-11 totals, including three multi-point games.