BOSTON — There’s no truth to the rumor that the University of New Hampshire will play the entire season without scoring a goal.

But after being blanked, 5-0, at Boston University in its season opener on Oct. 8, and 4-0 on Friday at Northeastern, who knows? The Huskies combined stifling defense with a balanced offense (each of four lines scored a goal) en route to their first shutout of the Wildcats (0-2-0) since Jan. 10, 1961.

And all the Wildcats have to look forward to tonight is their home opener against Hockey East rival and the nation’s No. 1 team, Boston College.

“Right now, obviously we’re disappointed,” UNH coach Dick Umile said. “We’re a team right now that’s not playing well. We have moments when we play well. But we’re not getting quality shots … scoring chances. We might have had some shots (27) but I don’t know how many ‘Grade A's’ we had.”

The Wildcats had very few ‘Grade As’ for the simple reason that the Huskies blocked 34 shots.

“We blocked a lot of shots, which was great because we talked about that all week long,” Northeastern coach Jim Madigan said after his first victory behind the Huskies’ bench. “The players responded really well. It was nice the way they competed to go out there and earn our first win of the year.”

Northeastern goalie Chris Rawlings (27 saves), who posted a school-record tying ninth career shutout, also lavished praise on his defense.

“I thought defensively a key was how many shots we blocked,” Rawlings said. “They’d come over the blue line and try to shoot on me. The pucks weren’t getting through, which made my job a lot easier.”

UNH held Northeastern without a shot for the first six minutes of the game. But then the Huskies unleashed a barrage on a virtually helpless Matt DiGirolamo (14 saves) and skated into the intermission with a 3-0 lead.

The Huskies scored their three goals on a mere six shots — commencing with Braden Pimm’s deflection of a Steve Quailer shot at 6:29.

Northeastern needed only 45 seconds to increase its lead to 2-0 when Zak Stone stuffed home the rebound of an Adam Reid shot.

The Huskies upped their advantage to 3-0 at 9:21 when Justin Daniels converted a Josh Manson pass by sliding the puck through DiGirolamo’s pads.

“It happened very quickly tonight,” Umile said. “In the first period, turnovers and a couple of bad passes on our part right to them and before we knew it we were down 3-zip.

“I give them credit for staying with it and trying to battle back. But they blocked a lot of shots and we didn’t find a way to get quality shots on net.”

Northeastern unleashed one last quality shot at 8:37 of the third when Mike McLaughlin snapped a shot from the right circle that beat DiGirolamo to the glove side.

“We’re shooting the puck but we’re not taking quality, ‘Grade A’ shots,” Mike Borisenok said. “When we do try to make a play, sometimes we try to make too much of a play versus trying to make a simple play. We’re going to have keep things simple so that things start to click and just continue pushing the pace and try to get goals.

“You could tell by the end of the game that guys were coming across the blue line looking to shoot the puck … trying to get something generated. The puck either was getting blocked or if there was a rebound it didn’t bounce out to one of our guys going to the net. So there definitely was some frustration.”