BC 4, NU 3: Eagles Come Back for Hockey East Win

Boston College men’s ice hockey is like the lemon sorbet of Eagles sports: a palate-cleanser.

Not three and a half hours after BC football dropped a stinker at Virginia Tech did the hockey team stage a comeback at Northeastern to win, 4-3 in overtime.

Like yesterday’s game, the Eagles got off to a fast start. Kevin Hayes, at the 1:55 mark of the first period, got the Eagles off to a quick 1-0 lead (Kreider assist). Northeastern would get a power play a few minutes later, however, and they’d cash in on a Steve Quailer goal, his first of the season (Daniels and Saponari assist).

Northeastern wasn’t done in the first period, though: Joseph Manno scored an even-strength goal at the 17:56 mark of the period, giving the Huskies a 2-1 lead (Karlsson assist). In the second, the same duo would come together again as Manno netted his second goal of the game to put Northeastern ahead, 3-1, at the 8:21 mark.

The comeback for the Eagles began in the third, as at the 8:04 mark, Barry Almeida scored his third goal of the season for Boston College to get the deficit back to one (Carey and Dumoulin assist). A few minutes later, the Eagles tied the game on a Brian Dumoulin goal that looked like it very well could have been credited to Pat Mullane, but instead, he got the assist on a goal that was reviewed by the officials.

Both goaltenders would hold up for the rest of regulation, but when overtime came around, Bill Arnold found the net with exactly one minute left on the clock for his fifth goal of the season and giving BC the win (Alber and Hayes assist). This, too, was reviewed by the officials, and it stood as called.

Boston College outshot the Huskies by a wide margin: 43 to 22. They outshot Northeastern in all four periods played, even including the first and second where they were outscored. Parker Milner was 19/22 in goal tonight, while Chris Rawlings (and honestly, there’s never an easy night when you’re facing BC) stopped an admirable 39 of the Eagles’ 43 shots, but he let in one too many and got the loss.

The Eagles found themselves in the penalty box a little too often tonight. The Huskies got eight power plays on the evening, but only converted on one of them. Meanwhile, Boston College, who scored multiple power play goals yesterday against UMass, went 0-5 with a man-advantage.

Make no mistake, even though this is October and there’s a long season to go, this is a good win for the Eagles. Coming back from down 3-1 in the third period is doable but doesn’t happen every day, especially when you’re the road team. Boston College stuck with it, however, and found a way to tie it and then win it. They didn’t go on cruise control the rest of the way and assume they were going to lose; they kept fighting and it paid off for them tonight. Their reward is a 5-1 record, likely retention of their top ranking, and six points out of a possible six in the conference so far.