Gabe Perreault, second in the nation in assists, dished the puck over to James Hagens and the freshman buried the goal, cutting No. 1 Boston College men’s hockey’s deficit to one goal with 2:34 left in the Hockey East Tournament quarterfinals.
Two minutes and nine seconds later, with No. 9 Northeastern holding a 2–1 lead over the Eagles, a hooking penalty on Christophe Tellier set the Eagles (26–7–2, 18–4–2 Hockey East) up to play out the last 25 seconds of the game on the power play.
“Well, we usually score some goals,” BC head coach Greg Brown said as he sat down in the postgame press conference.
The Eagles only got one shot off in those precious seconds.
Eamon Powell’s shot was blocked by Ryan McGuire who fired the puck all the way down the ice into BC’s empty net, and the Huskies (14–19–3, 7–14–3) walked away with a 3–1 upset win in Conte Forum on Saturday night.
“Right now, there’s nothing we can do about Hockey East,” Brown said. “Just have to feel that sting, get ready for the national tournament.”
Hockey East announced on Friday that BC’s Jacob Fowler had been selected as the back-to-back, and unanimous, Goaltender of the Year. In Saturday’s loss, something rare happened—Fowler actually seemed to struggle.
The sophomore goaltender has shown consistent excellence this season, shutting out BC’s opponents eight times and helping his team to a 26–6–2 regular season record.
But for a two minute frame in the second period of BC’s Hockey East Tournament quarterfinal game on Saturday night, Fowler didn’t look like the unanimous goaltender of the year. He didn’t look like the netminder with the nation’s third-best save percentage. And, to be fair, his team’s defense didn’t back him up too well either.
With a little less than four minutes left in the second period, Tellier came to a stop in transition and fired a shot at Fowler, who initially stopped the puck as it bounced off his glove.
But that’s when Joe Connor came flying onto the scene. Powell slid over from his position in front of the net to try and help, but the defense came too late, and the damage had already been done. Connor found his way into the crease and fired Tellier’s rebound into BC’s net to extend Northeastern’s lead to two.
“Credit to a lot of their team, they were selling out to get in front of pucks,” Brown said. “They played [a] smart game, the way they wanted to play, and when they got the lead they were able to manage the game well.”
A game that had been 0–0 for nearly 35 minutes had, in the span of about two minutes, become a one-sided affair.
A couple of minutes before Connor’s lead-doubling goal, Northeastern broke scoring open when Cam Lund received a pass, and despite having five Eagles surrounding him in BC’s defensive zone, fired a shot that flew top-shelf into the Eagles’ net.
“Getting the first goal is huge,” Northeastern head coach Jerry Keefe said. “Not having to chase the game—especially in this building. But I thought going into the third period with the two-goal lead was really important.”
Two goals in a short time period is hard to come back from, but it’s not as though BC didn’t have its fair share of chances, both before and after its two defensive mishaps. The Eagles led in shots on goal 20–17 at the end of two periods.
Eleven minutes into the second period, Ryan Leonard found himself on a breakaway. He looked almost out of control as he sped up the ice, attempting to keep the puck on his stick as he neared Northeastern’s net.
The nation’s leading scorer shot clanked off the red metal of the post, though, and the game remained knotted 0–0.
Despite only losing six games this season, BC’s cross-town foe is no stranger to giving the Eagles some trouble. BC split its early-season series with the Huskies, falling 4–2 on Nov. 23 in a game that was considered a rather ugly loss at the time for the then-No. 3 Eagles.
Not as ugly as Saturday night’s loss, though, as BC came within minutes of getting shut out for the first time this season on the biggest stage yet and was booted from the Hockey East Tournament by a nationally unranked opponent.
“You feel the sting, and use that as energy, and then look at what we can do better,” Brown said.
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