Boston College Men’s Hockey Knocks off UMass Lowell 4-0

Ryan Leonard leads the way once again

The Boston College men’s hockey team got a monster performance from Ryan Leonard and a great showing from the team’s defense on Friday night as they knocked off UMass Lowell 4-0. The Eagles jumped out to an early lead in the first period and never looked back, taking down another highly ranked Hockey East opponent in one of their most impressive wins of the season.

Jan Korec got the start in net for the Eagles and was tested early on when BC went to the penalty kill just under a minute into the game, but he made a few nice saves to help kill it off and BC immediately took advantage. Just a few seconds after the penalty expired, Ryan Leonard converted on a two-on-one rush, tapping the puck into an empty net after a great rush and pass by Drew Fortescue for his 20th goal of the season. The two teams played a pretty even period for the most part after that, until BC’s high end talent flashed once again. After BC strung a few shifts with some extended zone time together, Gabe Perreault was finally able to double the lead for the Eagles, when a spinning pass from James Hagens deflected off of his skate in the slot and into the net for Perreault’s 10th goal of the season. BC had a chance to extend their lead even more when they had almost a minute and a half of a 5-on-3 power play at the end of the period, but they were unable to convert and had to settle for a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes of play.

The second period was less eventful than the first, but BC continued to put forward a strong defensive effort. Lowell failed to register a single shot on goal in the middle 20, but BC wasn’t able to capitalize ether – coming up empty on the power play three more times, including another long stretch of five-on-three play. Still, they kept Lowell from doing anything even remotely dangerous and held onto their two-goal lead heading into the final period.

Ryan Leonard scored his second goal of the game just 13 seconds into the final period, scoring off a nice pass from Andre Gasseau following an icing with a shot through traffic to make it a 3-0 game. He made it 4-0 a few minutes later with a goal that I can’t even begin to describe, so I’ll just let you watch it here.

Leonard’s hat trick goal put this game out of reach for the River Hawks, and there wasn’t a whole lot of action at either end for the remainder of the game. Korec cleaned up the few shots that he did see to take home a shutout and the Eagles took their only game of the weekend by a 4-0 score.

This was an impressive showing in just about every area except for the power play from BC. They shut down Lowell all night and really didn’t give them more than a handful of good looks on net and their big names came through in a big way. Ryan Leonard continued his torrid pace and now has seven goals in his last three games as the Eagles head into the Beanpot on Monday when they take on Northeastern.