The Boston College men’s hockey team dropped their second game in a row on Friday night, falling to UMass 3-2. The Eagles never looked anything close to their best in this one, and they struggled to generate much offense throughout.
UMass got on the board first, scoring on the second shift of a game just over a minute in on a rebound off of a chance from just in front of Jacob Fowler’s net. The ice seemed tilted in UMass’s favor for a few shifts after that and they had a chance to double their lead with a power play just a few minutes after their first goal, but BC was able to kill it off and work themselves back into the game. The Eagles came up empty on their first power play chance of the night but looked pretty dangerous while on the advantage, and the struggling special teams unit was able to break through on their second opportunity. After an incredible save on a chance from Andre Gasseau from in close, Teddy Stiga took the rebound and made a quick pass to Gabe Perreault, who was able to fire the puck into the wide open net for his 12th goal of the season. There was some good action at both ends following Perreault’s goal, but neither side was able to put in a second and the period ended with the two teams tied at one.
The two teams played a second period that was mostly notable for how strong BC’s penalty kill looked, with the Eagles killing off three different penalties during the middle period. Brady Berard and Connor Joyce had the best chances of the period for the Eagles, both coming while the team was shorthanded, but it was UMass who finally managed to find a second goal, scoring on a perfect shot on a rush with just 1.1 seconds left on the clock. It was a tough way for the period to end for BC, but not one that was entirely unfair, as the Eagles really struggled to generate much of anything and found themselves trailing 2-1 heading into the third.
BC had their chances in the third period, but they weren’t able to get the goal that they needed. They had an early power play chance that turned into 14 seconds of a 5-on-3 advantage that they were not able to convert on and Gabe Perreault was turned away on a breakaway later on in the period, but outside of those few moments, they weren’t able to put a whole lot of offense together. They pulled Fowler late to try make one final push, but UMass put one into the empty net on a clearance attempt from their own end to make it 3-1. Ryan Leonard gave BC some hope with a goal with 26.5 seconds left on the clock, but they couldn’t get a look on net after the ensuing faceoff and they dropped this one by a 3-2 score.
This was an ugly one from the Eagles, no other way to look at it. They were sloppy all night and went for long stretches where they just couldn’t get anything going in the offensive end. There were bad turnovers, dumb penalties, and sloppy passes all night – pretty much everything that we haven’t been seeing from them as a team recently. Hopefully this turns out to just be a one off bad game that we can all forget about in a few weeks. They’ll have the chance to start showing us if that was the case tomorrow night when they travel to Amherst for the second game of this weekend series.