Northeastern’s hockey team didn’t need to know how long it had been since they’d won the Beanpot or beaten Boston University in February in this building. The Terrier fans in the TD Garden balcony were all too happy to enlighten them. “Nineteen-eighty-eight,” they chanted. “Nineteen-eighty-eight.”

None of the Huskies was alive a quarter of a century ago, so the date may as well have been 1066 as far as they’re concerned. “Facts and figures don’t win hockey games,” NU coach Jim Madigan said Monday night after his varsity had conjured a bit of new math on Causeway Street by upending its canine counterpart from Commonwealth Avenue by a 3-2 count to advance to next week’s championship game against defending champion Boston College.