Eagles take home a big comeback win
The Boston College men’s hockey team used a four-goal third period en route to a comeback win over Dartmouth on Friday night. James Hagens finally had his breakout game and four different Eagles scored as the Eagles were able to bounce back from a loss in their last game to Northeastern and pick up a win over another team ranked highly in the early season Pairwise rankings.
It was a sloppy looking first period from the Eagles, who failed to create much of anything in the opening 20 minutes against Dartmouth. The two teams traded power play opportunities that came up empty, and it took until the final minute of the period before Dartmouth was able to start the scoring in this one. The Big Green forced a turnover in BC’s defensive end to set up a bit of a two-on-one chance that ended with a quick wrist shot from the slot that beat Jacob Fowler to put the Eagles behind 1-0 heading into intermission.
BC continued to look a bit off for the first part of the second period, failing to convert on one full power play early in the period before coming up empty on an abbreviated attempt just a few minutes later. It took a gorgeous bit of passing for the Eagles to finally get on the board a little over halfway through the period. Gabe Perreault helped force a turnover behind the Dartmouth net and fed a pass to James Hagens out front. Hagens had the chance to shoot, but instead made a quick, short pass to Teddy Stiga, who immediately gave it right back to Hagens who now had a wide open net to fire the puck into for his second goal of the season. Dartmouth regained their lead a few minutes later, scoring on a rebound attempt after a turnover in the neutral zone left the Eagles attempting to defend an odd man rush. The Eagles had another power play chance to tie things up late in the period, but the failed to convert yet again and Dartmouth took a 2-1 lead into the third.
Hagens tied things up with his second goal of the night early on in the second period, scoring with a quick shot on a breakaway after Perreault forced a turnover and set up Hagens with a ridiculous spinning pass. The ice tilted in BC’s favor after the tying goal, with the Eagles generating a number of dangerous scoring chances over the next several shifts. They were denied on yet another power play chance not long after tying the game up and it looked like they were going to come up empty on another chance just a few minutes later, but Mike Posma managed to jam home a rebound chance from just outside of the crease with two seconds left on the man advantage to give BC their first lead of the night with just over six minutes to play. The Eagles had to survive a late score, when Dartmouth had a late power play chance and pulled their goalie to give them a two-man advantage, but Teddy Stiga managed to put home a shorthanded, empty net goal to make it a 4-2 game. Dartmouth got a goal back with 1:19 to go in regulation to make it a 4-3 score, but Andre Gasseau added in another empty net goal with less than 30 seconds to go to clinch a big comeback win for BC.
This was not a pretty game at all from the Eagles through 40 minutes, but they put together a fantastic third period to come away with the result. With the win, they improve to 10-3-0 on the season and even though there are certainly things to be concerned about, that’s a pretty darn good record considering the schedule that they’ve played through 13 games. They’ll get right back into Hockey East play with a midweek game against UConn on Wednesday night in what will be a chance to avenge a loss to the Huskies from a few weeks back.