Eagles start their weekend with a win
The Boston College men’s hockey team started off their weekend strong, taking down Vermont 7-1 in the first game of a two-game series. The Eagles looked a bit sloppy early on, but used a dominant second period to turn a close game into a blowout in the blink of an eye. BC got contributions from up and down their lineup on Friday night, with six different players scoring goals as the team won its fifth straight game and continued to look impressive as the regular season winds down.
The two teams traded empty power plays early on, with BC kill off two man advantage opportunities from Vermont before being blanked on one of their own. The Eagles got on the board just a few seconds after their power play expired, however, when Lukas Gustafsson picked up a rebound off of a Mike Posma shot and fired home a wrist shot for his third goal of the season. That was all the scoring we saw in the first period, as BC hit a post and came up just short on a number of great chances throughout the period but were forced to settle for 1-0 lead after 20 minutes of play.
Cutter Gauthier doubled the Eagles lead with a power play goal a little less than seven minutes into the second period. BC had looked a little sloppy on the man advantage before the goal, but a big hit from Ryan Leonard in the defensive zone got them going in transition and some great passing from Will Smith and Gabe Perreault set Gauthier up with a wide open net and he did the rest for his team best 27th goal of the season. He scored his 28th of the season and second of the night on another power play just a few minutes later, with this one coming off of a bit more of a structured set up when he fired a lethal wrist shot after some extended zone time from the top unit. Jacob Bengtsson made it a 4-0 just a few seconds after that when he jammed home a rebound in the crease to make the game start looking like a blowout. They kept rolling with another goal a few shifts later, this one coming when an attempted cross ice pass from Oskar Jellvik was broken up and landed right on Andre Gasseau’s stick in the low slot. Gasseau made no mistake, putting home his 10th of the season. Vermont got a goal back shortly thereafter to make it a 5-1 score, but that was as close as they got in the second, as the Eagles took a four-goal lead into the final period.
Gabe Perreault restored BC’s five-goal lead just 19 seconds into the third, tapping the puck into a wide open net after a great individual effort from Will Smith to win a puck battle and make a pass while falling to the ice. Aidan Hreschuk got in on the fun about halfway through the period, when his wrist shot from the board managed to squeeze through the Vermont goalie and barely trickle over the line to close out the scoring at 7-1.
That makes five in a row for BC, who has responded very well after dropping a tough game to BU in the opening round of the Beanpot. The win means that they remain atop the Hockey East standings and the Pairwise rankings as they now have just four games remaining on their schedule. One of those games is tomorrow night, when they’ll close out the weekend by hosting Vermont once again as they go for the series sweep.