Boston College Men’s Hockey Falls to UMass 3-2

The Boston College men’s hockey team lost to UMass 3-2 in overtime in a top ten matchup on Friday night. Matt Boldy and Jack McBain scored second period goals to give the Eagles a 2-0 lead, but the Minutemen scored three unanswered goals to win in comeback fashion.

The two teams skated to a scoreless first period, but it was not for a lack of scoring chances. BC and UMass traded chances early and often, but Spencer Knight and Filip Lindberg were up to every challenge throughout the period. Drew Helleson made a great play to break up what would have been a chance on a wide open net on a UMass power play, while Alex Newhook used his great speed to create a breakaway chance late, but he started to lose control of the puck just before he was able to get a real chance off. It was a fast paced period that lived up to the hype of a top-10 matchup, with a total of 29 shots on goal recorded between the two teams.

The Eagles got on the board first in the second, when BC’s sophomore line took advantage of a UMass turnover about eight minutes into the period. Mike Hardman took a pass from Alex Newhook and looked to find Matt Boldy out front to finish off a two-on-one. Boldy managed to get his stick to the puck to deflect it past Lindberg to give BC a 1-0 lead. It looked like it might have been a UMass player’s stick and not Boldy’s that deflected the puck, but the original call gave the goal to Boldy and not Hardman and has not been changed as of now. The Eagles got a few big penalty kills against a dangerous UMass power play after the goal, before Jack McBain doubled their lead with 4:33 left in the period. McBain scored his sixth of the season on a one-timer from a nice cross ice pass from Nikita Nesterenko that beat Lindberg. Umass answered right back, however, scoring a goal of their own to make it 2-1 just five seconds after McBain’s tally. The Minutemen had a few decent chances to tie it in the last few minutes of the period, but Knight made the stops he needed to make to keep BC ahead after 40 minutes.

UMass came out pushing for a tying goal in the third period, forcing BC to play much of the period in their defensive zone. Knight managed to keep the Minutemen off the board for a while, but UMass eventually tied things up with 5:49 left in regulation. A shot from the boards ended up bouncing off a UMass player just outside of the crease and past Knight to tie things at 2 after a brief review from the officials. BC got their legs back a bit after the tying goal and put some pressure on late in the period, but they weren’t able to beat Lindberg and regulation ended with the score still tied.

UMass won things a few minutes into overtime, scoring on a strange play to knock off BC. A UMass player looked to have a breakaway, but Drew Helleson made a diving attempt to break the play up. Helleson did knock the player off the puck (getting called for a penalty in the process), but ended up sliding into Knight in the process. Knight was knocked into his net as a result and the puck slid into the net, giving UMass a 3-2 win.

BC looked good for two period, but the third period and overtime belonged to the Minutemen. The loss snapped a four game winning streak for the Eagles and left the Hockey East standings a bit up in the air, as UMass will likely jump up after their win. This is the only game on the schedule for BC this weekend, so we’ll wait to see who they’ll face next weekend when the Hockey East regular season comes to and end.