With an impending winter storm threatening to dump over a foot of snow on the Heights and send Chestnut Hill into near-zero temperatures, No. 15 Boston College men’s hockey and New Hampshire ensured that there were plenty of fireworks in Conte Forum on Friday night.
Within 5:54, both teams had lit up the goal lights a combined three times.
In the end, the Eagles (12–8–1, 8–5–0 Hockey East) defeated the Wildcats (11–11–0, 5–7–0) 5–2. Dean Letourneau led the Eagles with two goals and an assist, while James Hagens added on a goal and an assist of his own.
The top line—Letourneau, Jake Sondreal, and Will Vote—led BC to the victory after a few games playing apart, as the trio combined for three goals and three assists.
“We have such great chemistry,” Letourneau said about the line. “We kind of have a knack for just finding each other in the open shots, so I love playing with them.”After controlling the puck for the first 90 seconds, BC broke through on a laser from senior Andre Gasseau to go up 1–0 at the 1:39 mark.
Gasseau has tallied back-to-back games with a goal and has four points in his three games since returning from an injury that kept him out for more than two months.
“When you get a player who contributes in every facet of the game, it’s huge,” BC head coach Greg Brown said. “It was a long stretch that we managed pretty well without [Gasseau], but we’re a lot happier when he’s in the lineup.”
BC’s lead didn’t last long. Less than a minute and a half later, Nick Ring turned a Will Skahan penalty into a power-play goal, collecting the rebound following a Louka Cloutier save and tying the game 1–1.
BC’s leading goal scorer did not let things stay the way they were, though. Hagens found Letourneau right in front of the crease, and the sophomore fan-favorite cashed it in to put the Eagles on top 2–1 and collect his fifth power-play goal of the season.
Less than five minutes into the second frame, the Wildcats tied things back up, 2–2, on a Cy LeClerc goal. But the Eagles responded quickly once again. In a near mirror-image to BC’s second goal, Sondreal cut up the middle of the ice and turned a picture-perfect feed from Letourneau into an easy score to go up 3–2. Sondreal has 20 points on the year, continuing his breakout sophomore campaign after he tallied six points last season.
“[Sondreal] does everything right,” Brown said. “He had a lot of good hockey last year, but it just didn’t translate into the offensive side of it, and now he’s contributing everywhere again … It’s great to see him rewarded with the points this year.”
Through 40 minutes of play, the game felt eerily similar to BC’s first game against Providence last weekend, where the Eagles outshot the Friars but made crucial mistakes that allowed Providence to steal a victory.
Going into the third, BC held a 24–13 shot advantage over UNH and had controlled the puck for the majority of the game. But penalties and the Eagles’ failure to secure the puck after saves were the reason that dominance had not led to a larger cushion.
BC’s stars ensured that trend would not continue in the final period.
Cloutier anchored another penalty kill for the Eagles, making a trio of crucial saves to maintain the lead. Then, just nine seconds after getting back to even strength, Hagens took the puck, raced down the ice, and finished it himself, sniping one past Wildcat netminder Kyle Chauvette to double BC’s lead to 4–2.
Cloutier made 12 saves in the third, including a one-on-one stop against Jacob Newcombe, and ended the game with 23 total saves.
Vote found Letourneau for his second goal of the game, an empty-netter, to give the Eagles a 5–2 win. BC found itself in the Hockey East win column for the first time since a victory against UMass Lowell on Dec. 6.
“We know we needed a good response after last week,” Brown said. “Our heads were in the right spot.”
