Eagles get their weekend started with a win
The Boston College men’s hockey team got their weekend started off on the right foot on Friday night, taking down Northeastern 3-0 in the first game of a two-game series. As has often been the case of late, the Eagles were lead by Ryan Leonard, who remains on an absolute heater after his two-goal performance tonight. Jacob Fowler looked great in his return to net and BC made it two conference wins on the week with a chance to grab a third tomorrow night.
The Eagles started strong in the first period on Friday night, stringing together a number of good shifts to build off of their excellent third period against Providence from earlier in the week. They managed to cash in early, when Leonard put home his team leading ninth goal of the season, tapping the puck into a wide open net to finish off a give-and-go with Gabe Perreault to give BC a 1-0 lead. Andre Gasseau made it a 2-0 game just about halfway through the opening period, jamming home a rebound off of a Lukas Gustafsson point shot for his sixth goal of the year. Northeastern manage to work themselves into the game a bit after the second goal, but Jacob Fowler was up to the task in his return from his one game suspension, stopping all 10 shots the Huskies put up to keep BC’s two-goal lead in tact.
The two teams skated to a scoreless second period, without a whole lot of offense from either side. The Eagles spent a lot of time in their defensive zone, but they did a good job at keeping Northeastern from getting the puck into any dangerous areas. Perreault had the best chance of the period for BC when he fired a puck off the post, but other than that, it wasn’t the crispest of periods for the Eagles’ offense. Ryan Leonard looked like he got banged with about a minute left, but he returned for the third period and didn’t miss a shift.
Leonard didn’t miss a beat coming out for the third either, scoring his second goal of the night on a wicked wrist shot on his first shift of the period to give BC a 3-0 lead. That was it for the scoring in this one, as BC played a tight defensive third period while Fowler continued to stop everything that Northeastern got on net as he picked up his fourth shutout of the season in just his 10th game.
After a handful of close, stressful games, it was good to BC come away with a relatively easy win. They jumped out to a multi-goal lead early on and Northeastern never really looked all that likely to get back into it as the game went on. With the win, the Eagles improve to 9-2-0 on the season and 4-1-0 in Hockey East play. They’ll have a chance to complete the sweep tomorrow night when they travel to Matthews Arena to finish their weekend series with the Huskies.