Thanks to some timely goals and a fantastic individual effort in overtime, the BC men’s hockey season will live another day,
For a while, it looked like a repeat of Friday night, with BC leading early but falling behind in the third, only to force overtime with a late goal. This time, however, the ending was better.
Logan Hutsko potted the game winner in overtime and BC forced Providence to a decisive game 3 on Sunday afternoon. It was an eerily similar game to Friday night’s contest, with the Eagles wrapping things up even quicker in overtime than the Friars did last night.
JD Dudek opened the scoring with a fantastic wrist shot about 8 minutes into the game. Dudek took a pass at the blue line from Ben Finkelstein with some space and ripped a shot just under the crossbar to put BC up 1-0. David Cotton made it 2-0 less than two minutes later, when he beat Hayden Hawkey through the five with a backhanded shot. The Eagles didn’t have a ton of scoring chances outside of their two quick goals, but they broke the puck out of their own zone well enough and didn’t spend too much time playing defense. It was about as good a start as possible in a do-or-die game for BC.
Providence cut the lead to 2-1 just about five minutes into the second. An offensive zone faceoff lead to a wrist shot from the slot that beat Joe Woll cleanly and brought Providence back into the game. The Friars tied things up with 4:51 left in the second, after some tenacious forechecking lead to a shot from right in front of Woll. BC spent the lion’s share of the second period in their own zone, and Woll had to make some tough saves to keep things tied at two. Providence kept the pressure on BC for the remainder of the period, but weren’t able to pick up a third goal, and the teams went into the third tied at 2.
Providence took the lead early in the third period, with a goal just over six minutes in. A wrist shot from the top of the circle beat Woll up high and put the Friars up 3-2. Marc McLaguhlin tied things up late in the third with a power play goal off of a great pass from Logan Hutsko. BC’s power play was the first sustained pressure they had for a long time, and McLaughin’s goal was a result of some very nice puck movement. The 3-3 score held for the rest of the period and the two teams went to overtime for the second straight night.
Hutsko made short work of the overtime, scoring on a breakway less than 30 seconds in. He outworked his defender to create a breakaway and fired a wrist shot past Hawkey to give BC the win. Honestly, words don’t do the job for this goal. Hutsko’s game winner was a fantastic piece of individual effort that saved BC’s season, if only for another day.
The Eagles blew another two goal lead on Saturday but rebounded to save the day and force a game 3 on Sunday. The two teams will face off again at 5 PM on Sunday, with BC once again needing a win to stay alive.