Boston College Men’s Hockey Falls to Holy Cross in Exhibition Game

Boston College hit the ice for the first time under new head coach Greg Brown tonight as the Eagles faced Holy Cross in an exhibition game. Unfortunately for Coach Brown and the team, it wasn’t the outing any of us would’ve wanted, as BC fell to the Crusaders by a score of 3-2.

The game got off to a choppy start, and Holy Cross took the 1-0 lead at 15:15 after Trevor Kuntar took a penalty and put BC into a penalty kill situation. The Eagles tied things up at 5:45 thanks to a power play of their own, with freshman Cutter Gauthier picking up his first goal as an Eagle. The game stayed knotted at 1 through the first period, and the teams went into the locker room with 8 shots on goal each.

For the second period, BC replaced Mitch Benson in net with Jack Moffatt. The teams remained tied at 2 until 5:31 in the period, when Holy Cross got one past Moffatt to take a 2-1 lead, despite BC dominating much of the period to that point. With just 2:44 to go in the second, the teams went to 4-on-4 after a scrum in front of BC’s net, and then BC took a penalty shortly after that was up, but the score stayed as it was and Holy Cross took a 2-1 lead into the final period of regulation.

The Eagles gave their final goalie the start in the third, putting Henry Wilder in as they looked to get things going. BC started the period off on the penalty kill, and Colby Ambrosio quickly sent the Eagles back on the PK after they killed the first one. Unfortunately BC wasn’t so lucky this time, and Holy Cross took a 3-1 lead about halfway through the penalty. After BC pulled Wilder, Colby Ambrosio finally broke BC’s scoreless streak while the Eagles were on a power play to cut Holy Cross’s lead to 3-2.

The Crusaders held onto the lead as the clock wound down to take this one 3-2, but the teams stayed on the ice to play an overtime period and shootout for practice. The overtime period was scoreless, and in the shootout Nesterenko was the only Eagle to score.

Cutter Gauthier, Nikita Nesterenko, and Marshall Warren were the standout skaters for BC in the loss. Gauthier is, as expected, very good, even though he does have some adjusting to do to the college game. Nesterenko looks a lot smoother and steadier than he did last year. And Warren, as always, is all over the ice doing everything.

Colby Ambrosio took a while to get into the groove and made a few messy plays to start, but he locked in as the game progressed and scored a solid goal to keep BC in the game. On the other end of the ice, Mitch Benson also looked promising in the one period we saw of him, which will be huge for this team as they try to find a scoring touch.