BC 4, UMass 2: Top-Ranked Eagles Keep Rolling

It was hardly unexpected, but the Boston College Eagles found their first win at Kelley Rink on the season by taking out the UMass Minutemen by a 4-2 score. With the win, the Eagles are 4-1 and have a perfect four points out of a possible four in Hockey East play to this point. The Minutemen have fallen to 1-2-1 and sit at just one Hockey East point through three conference games.

Boston College struck first, almost immediately, as Eagles points leader Bill Arnold found the net with 1:18 elapsed in the opening period (Kreider and Hayes assist). That lead was short-lived, however, as freshman Andrew Tegeler scored his first career goal at 8:23 in the same period to tie the score (Czepiel and Yevenko assist). The Eagles were not content to be in a tie game, though: Chris Kreider scored on a power play goal late in the first to give the Eagles a 2-1 lead (Dumoulin and Hayes assist).

Bill Arnold would find the goals column again at 17:01 in the second period, matching Kreider with four goals on the early season (Dumoulin and MacLeod assist). For a while, it looked like that might be the final goal, but freshman sensation John Gaudreau had something to say about that — he put the Eagles ahead 4-1 at 10:11 in the third on a power play (apparently unassisted). UMass also wasn’t done, as they made it a two-goal game at the 17:07 mark of the third on a Michael Marcou goal (Sheary and Gracel assist).

Parker Milner had a good game in-goal, garbage-time second UMass goal notwithstanding. He did not face many shots, as the Eagles outshot the Minutemen by close to a (but not quite a) 2:1 ratio, but his UMass counterpart, Jeff Teglia, was under a lot more duress and let in several more goals. The Eagles were 2/6 on the power play, while going 7/7 on the penalty kill. Good power play conversion rates plus a perfect PK in a game usually means your team is going to win, and tonight was just that for BC.

The next Eagles hockey game is tomorrow night, just a few miles to the east. Boston College will head back out on the road to face the Northeastern Huskies.