‘We’re getting our swagger back’: Huskies look to carry newfound power into the Beanpot

The end of January means one very important thing for the Huskies: Beanpot is coming.

The men’s ice hockey team (13-9-3, 11-4-2 HE) will head to TD Garden Feb. 6 once again to compete in the 70th Beanpot tournament, Boston’s most highly-anticipated college hockey rivalry series, where they will face Boston University (19-6-0, 13-4-0 HE) for the third time this season.

Beanpot wages a war between Beantown’s four biggest Division I hockey programs — Northeastern, BU, Boston College and Harvard — and drives them to compete for a pot-shaped trophy and earn city-wide bragging rights for the year to come.

Though the battle does not affect conference standings, it will be personal for both teams, as the Huskies fight to dismount the reigning Beanpot champions and the Terriers seek to stop Northeastern in its tracks for the second year in a row. In last year’s title game, BU topped Northeastern in a 1-0 slugfest behind then-sophomore forward Dylan Peterson’s goal in the final two minutes of the game.

Northeastern is 1-1 against BU this season, skating to both a heroic last-period victory and a crushing overtime defeat in a home-andhome series last November. As they head into the next matchup, the Huskies are looking to extend their five-game win streak marked by victories against No. 14 University of Connecticut and No. 15 Merri- mack College. To do so, they will need to do three things: focus on the offensive details, stay out of the box and come awake defensively.

One of Northeastern’s greatest roadblocks this season has been its difficulty completing passes and finishing plays; five of its nine losses have been decided by one goal.

The Huskies often struggle with closing gaps and communicating on-ice, two things which cannot happen against a competitive team like BU — a group that only has one regulation home loss so far this season (Northeastern’s 2-0 win Nov. 18).

In head coach Jerry Keefe’s eyes, this first step is vital.

“I think some of our details are getting better — they need to be better,” said Keefe at Monday’s Beanpot media luncheon. “Our commitment to checking in the middle of the rink and back pressure has been a big emphasis for us. That’s helped us offensively because we have the puck more.”

A huge component of Northeastern’s recent scoring efforts has been the emergence of graduate student forward Liam Walsh as an offensive force. After a slow start marked by no points and an injury that sidelined him for much of October and all of November, Walsh is on a five-game point streak that began with a goal against UConn at Frozen Fenway in early January.

Walsh, who transferred from Merrimack this season, attributes this sudden spike to an increased comfort level on Husky ice.

“Coming back [from the injury] … and being able to play those back-to-back games has really allowed me to be more comfortable with the system,” Walsh said. “Getting familiar with some linemates has been a big bonus as well.”

As Walsh and other middle-liners heat up, the top line — usually featuring senior Aidan McDonough, sophomore Justin Hryckowian and freshman Cam Lund — gets a bit of a break.

“We feel like [our strength] is up the middle,” Keefe said. “It allows us to really use our depth in each game now.”

In addition to an improved full-strength play, the Huskies have also cleaned up their penalty kill. Northeastern’s .856 penalty kill ranks No. 8 in the country, but Keefe knows that isn’t enough.

When penalties come from lazy moves or sloppy plays, they put the team at an unnecessary disadvantage. A team’s best bet is to be disciplined and clean.

“Your best penalty kill is not taking penalties,” Keefe said.

“When you’re playing teams like … BU, you’ve got to make sure that you’re disciplined, you’re prepared on the [penalty kill]. You’ve got to have all five guys … on the same team.”

When the Huskies lose momentum, they struggle to regain it. Back-to-back penalties could mean the difference between another shot at the trophy or a demotion to the consolation game in the upcoming tournament.

In moments like those, having a goalie as strong as Levi — a .927 save percentage has him tied for sixth in the country — is extremely comforting for a team’s defensive core.

There is a danger in having this safety net, though. A defense too reliant on a brick-wall goalie puts too much pressure on the netminder. One goaltender can only do so much; they are the backup defense, after all.

As Levi, who missed last year’s tournament to play for Canada’s Olympic team in Beijing, takes the Beanpot ice for the first time, he will need a steady and forceful defense protecting him, and his team knows that.

“If [Levi] sees the shot, he’s going to save it 99% of the time,” said senior defenseman Tyler Spott. “If we just clear the lanes and get guys out of the net front, he’s going to make the save … We don’t want to take advantage and play too risky.”

Northeastern entered this season as the favorite to win the Hockey East regular season. After a bumpy start to the season, they quickly dropped from the pairwise ranking. In the last few weeks, however, Northeastern seems to have gotten back on its feet.

Before the Huskies make the trek downtown, they will face UConn for the third time this season in their home barn Friday. If Northeastern can carry that momentum through the next week, it should have a shot at the ‘pot.

“We’re getting our swagger back,” Walsh said. “Getting those [five] wins has been really big for the morale around the room, and [it shows] that we believe in this group — we always did. … We know we can do it, and we’re proving that now.”

By Eli Curwin News Staff

On the second floor of MIT’s Rotch Library sits a display case containing a wooden Arabic instrument, revealing part of the complex and lost history of the Syrian community in Boston.

The pear-shaped stringed instrument, called an oud, was owned by the late Arabic singer Anton Abdelahad, a resident of Boston’s Little Syria. Abdelahad’s oud and his story are part of an MIT exhibit, opened Dec. 1, that chronicles the near-forgotten history of the neighborhood.

“In the beginning for us, [we were] just thinking about … how [we can] understand the context of larger patterns of migration from the Ottoman Empire, and specifically Lebanon and Syria, to Boston and … the Americas,” said Chloe Bordewich, a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University and historian of the modern Middle East.

Through oral histories, Boston census data and familial interviews and heirlooms, Bordewich and Lydia Harrington, a postdoctoral fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, curated the exhibit to create a tangible way to explore the past of Middle Eastern communities in Boston.

“One large point of the exhibition was to show real visual evidence of the neighborhood as it was,” Harrington said. “We had been in touch with families we found through local churches … and we talked with them a lot to find out their specific experiences, or to research specific people who were major figures in the neighborhood.”

One of these notable figures was Abdelahad, whose music appeared in famous movies such as “Pulp Fiction.” He performed for the king of Saudi Arabia and became, at the time, one of the most popular Arab performers in the country though appearing in concerts and music festivals.

Abdelahad’s parents, his father Assad Abdelahad and his mother Ramza Abdelahad, immigrated to the South End from Damascus, Syria as teenagers in 1902 and 1904, respectively.

“My father’s mother was 15 years old when she came to the United States. She was very well educated in the Middle East, a kind of prodigy,” said Sharon Abdelahad Wall, Anton Abdelahad’s daughter and a 1973 Northeastern alum. “Her mother had looked into a pre-arranged marriage … so [Ramza] appealed to her dad and said, ‘My sister is in Boston, they want me to come. They are running a business and would like me to go to America.’”

Between 1880 and 1930, thousands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants moved into Boston’s South End and today’s Chinatown, forming a small neighborhood labeled “Little Syria.” Fleeing economic hardship, Ottoman military conscription during World War I, religious persecution and the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, “Little Syria” communities popped up throughout the United States.

Ramza and Assad Abdelahad settled on Hudson Street, where they had three children: Evelyn in 1908, Anton in 1915 and Charles in 1918. For Anton Abdelahad, coming from an impoverished family compelled him to take up an early profession in music.

Little Syria was “never 100% Syrian,” Bordewich said. Buildings in the neighborhood housed Syrians, but also Greeks and Armenians.

“We found an oral history where one woman said, ‘We could swear in 10 different languages,’” Harrington said. “[The Syrian community] was definitely interacting with different types of people, different backgrounds.”

With Abdelahad’s fast-tempo and authentic Arabic music entertaining Middle Eastern audiences throughout the country in the ‘30s and ‘40s, he was able to move out of his parents’ home to live with his wife in 1940 and start his own record label in 1947.

In fact, at this time, many families started to move out of Little Syria and into the suburbs. Highway and university construction, development of condominiums and upheaval due to the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s urban renewal program forced many families into the outskirts of the city.

“The demographics shifted overtime and, by the ‘40s and ‘50s, you are seeing new groups of immigrants who are coming in and … [now] renting from the Syrians,” Bordewich said. “The Syrians are no longer the ones renting from the Irish, Italian or English owners.”

As the salience of Little Syria wound down in the late 19th century, so did Abdelahad’s time performing. He died in West Roxbury Dec. 25, 1995, but his music continues to be played in Arabic settings throughout the world.

Today, remnants of the community can be found in the Syrian grocery stores and restaurants on Shawmut Avenue and within the churches that moved with the community out into the suburbs.

“The community is still there,” Arthur Abdelahad said. “Unfortunately, with every generation, it gets a little thinner, but that’s the way it is. But my children, we’ve embraced the food … the traditions and our children still feel the love and embrace their heritage.”