BC 2, UMass 1: Eagles Hold Off Minutemen to Take Game 1

It was not the sort of blowout victory one might have expected in a 1-8 tournament game, nor was it the best the Eagles could do, but it was just good enough to win.

On Friday night at Conte Forum, the #1 Boston College Eagles defeated the Massachusetts Minutemen, 2-1, to take Game 1 of the Hockey East quarterfinals series between these two teams. The Eagles have now won twelve games in a row and can advance to the semifinals if they beat UMass again on Saturday night.

With only one penalty called on either team all night, this game was what one might hope playoff hockey would be: a loosely-called contest. As such, there was action, but in the first period, no scoring. It was not until the second that the Eagles got on the scoreboard. Pat Mullane did the honors for BC, giving the Eagles a 1-0 lead at 17:46 for his seventh goal of the year (Gaudreau assisted).

Both of Boston College’s goals were scored within a minute of each other, because the second came at 18:25 of the same period. For that one, you can thank captain Tommy Cross as the Eagles went ahead 2-0 (Gaudreau and Carey assisted).

From there, the Minutemen did not go away. As a matter of fact, on the whole, they put more pucks on the net than the Eagles did. One of them eventually got through Parker Milner, and that came off of the stick of Steven Guzzo at 6:55 of the third to make it a 2-1 game (Marcou and Pereira assisted). This created 13+ minutes of more tension than Boston College fans expected in a game such as this, but when all was said and done, it was a win and the Eagles keep rolling.

The Eagles can take comfort in the fact that they did not play their best game last night and yet still won. As the competition gets more difficult, however, they can’t afford to have any off-nights. Luckily, for now, they can still manage.

As previously mentioned, the Eagles can close out the Minutemen tonight with a win; puck drop is at approximately 7pm, and hopefully there will not be any power outages.

Special note: the women’s hockey team is playing their first round NCAA Tournament game today for a chance to go to the Frozen Four; tickets will be sold at the doors of Conte Forum. Be sure to head out and support this team. The puck drops at 1pm.