Boston College Men’s Hockey Knocks off UNH 5-0

The Boston College men’s hockey took down New Hampshire for the second time in just over a week on Sunday afternoon, blowing them out 5-0. The Eagles got goals from five different players and looked like the better team basically for the entirety of the game as they improved to 2-1-1 on the season and a perfect 2-0-0 in Hockey East play.

The two teams played a scoreless first 20 minutes, with BC unable to score despite controlling play for the majority of the time. The Eagles came out with a strong forecheck and spent most of the first period in UNH’s zone. Nikita Nesterenko hit a post about 10 minutes in and Cam Burke had a great look near the end of the period, but UNH managed to escape unscathed. Mitch Benson wasn’t all that busy in net at the other end, but he did make one nice save on UNH’s best scoring chance of the period off of an open shot from the slot.

Nikita Nesterenko almost got the scoring started a few minutes into the second period, when he came out of the penalty box and stole a puck in the neutral zone to create a 2-on-0 opportunity with Connor Joyce. Joyce made a pass to Nesterenko who looked like he’d have an easy tap in, but UNH goalie David Fessenden got across his crease and made a great save to keep it a 0-0 game. Lukas Gustafsson did finally open the scoring a few minutes later, scoring his first goal as an Eagle on a one0timer off a slick cross-ice pass from Oskar Jellvik in the last few seconds of a power play. That looked like it would be the only scoring of the period, until the Eagles scored two goals in the last 50 seconds. Nikita Nesterenko made it a 2-0 game with a perfect shot on an odd man rush that he worked to create after Cutter Gauthier took a hit to clear the defensive zone. Nesterenko and Colby Ambrosio had a two-on-one chance, and Nesterenko chose to do it himself and picked up his first goal of the season. On the very next shift, Trevor Kuntar jumped on a loose rebound and slammed it home for his second of the year to give BC a three-goal lead headed into the third period.

Gauthier added a goal of his own about halfway through the third period, jumping on a rebound off of a shot from Cade Alami and smoothing slotting it home for his second of the season. Mike Posma got his first of the season a few minutes later, putting home a loose puck after his attempted cross ice pass was broken up. All that was left from there was keeping UNH off the board, which BC was able to do, wrapping up Mitch Benson’s first shutout as an Eagle in a 5-0 win.

This was BC’s best game of the season so far, and considering that they’re coming off of two really solid efforts, that’s saying something. They dominated UNH for pretty much the full 60 minutes, constantly being aggressive on the forecheck while giving up very little in terms of scoring chances in their own end. The big guys showed up on the scoreboard and the Eagles got some timely secondary scoring as well. Hard to ask for a much better script than the one we got on Sunday. We’ll see if they can keep things rolling when they travel to Hartford to take on UConn on Thursday night.