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Friday night’s loss to the UMass Minutemen was frustrating, but there were plenty of signs that Boston College Men’s Hockey might return strong on Saturday. BC ran into a hot goaltender and controlled the game for long stretches despite not coming away with the win.
And return strong they did. Saturday night, after giving up an early goal in the first period, the Eagles took over in the late first and early second, giving themselves a comfortable lead and cruising to a strong 6-3 win on the road against UMass.
The Minutemen came out the better team early, and they were able to take advantage of game flow with a goal midway through the first period. UMass had a commanding lead in shots to that point — 12-2 at one point — but an Eagle power play shortly after the UMass goal swung momentum hard toward BC. David Cotton scored on the power play, followed by Mike Hardman at even strength a few minutes later to swing the Eagles right into the lead at the first intermission.
That momentum continued into the second period as Marshall Warren scored just two minutes in, followed by another power play goal from Ben Finkelstein a few minutes later to make it 4-1. That cushion would be enough to weather a few UMass surges through the rest of the game without making things too stressful. The Minutemen scored midway through the second period, only to see Matt Boldy bring the lead back to 3 before the end of the frame, sending the teams into the locker room at 5-2.
UMass got the early goal they were looking for in the third period with a tally just 50 seconds in, but that was as close as they would get. BC’s third power play goal of the night, this time from Logan Hutsko, put the game on ice with half a period to play, and the 6-3 score would remain as the final.
The split against UMass was at least as much as BC deserved on the weekend given that they ran into a hot goaltender on Friday night, but it’s at least an acceptable result as BC wades into a really tricky part of the schedule. Next up for the Eagles is a road contest at Lowell on on Friday night before the Eagles host Boston University in their first game of the year against the Terriers on Saturday.