BC ascends rankings after best weekend yet
Thanksgiving weekend gave the local men’s college hockey teams a break from conference play, but there was still plenty of action as schools seized the opportunity to take on nonleague foes.
Boston College hit the road and came away with a pair of victories over Notre Dame and Harvard, and that’s where we’ll start the recap.
■ BC coach Greg Brown has downplayed his team’s position in the rankings all season, routinely pointing out that while it’s nice to get noticed, the Eagles still have plenty of areas to improve on.
That outlook will not change this week with the Eagles moving into the top spot in the USCHO.com poll, but Brown liked what he saw after BC (11-2-1) defeated the Fighting Irish handily Friday, 6-1, then followed up with a 4-1 win over the Crimson Sunday.
“Friday was our best game structurally this year,” said Brown. “We really were sound positionally. I thought this weekend was the best we’ve had so far at that. We didn’t make the big mistake or we didn’t try things that were crazy.”
Freshman Ryan Leonard scored twice in both games and has eight goals over an eightgame point streak. Sophomore Cutter Gauthier had the game-winner against Harvard, breaking a 1-1 tie in the third. He leads Hockey East with 12 goals and is one behind the national leader, Denver’s Jack Devine.
■ Harvard (1-3-3) went 0-2 despite a couple of solid performances. The Crimson opened the weekend with a 6-5 loss to No. 10 UMass before taking on BC.
“I’m certainly not happy with the result,” said coach Ted Donato. “We’re not in the moral victory game, but I’m certainly proud of our effort and our compete level. I thought we did a lot of good things that we can build on. We played some really strong teams, and I think we’re improving. I think as a group we have to keep digging in.”
Sophomore Ryan Healey had a pair of goals in the loss to the Minutemen, a game in which the Crimson jumped out to a 2-0 advantage and led, 5-3, late in the second period.
■ Friday’s game marked the third straight time UMass (9-3-1) was able to rally from a third-period deficit to get the win. The Minutemen trailed, 5-4, until junior Lucas Mercuri scored the equalizer less than five minutes into the third. Kenny Connors added the gamewinner three minutes later.
“We’re a resilient group,” said Mercuri. “We’ve come back in the third period a couple of times now. There was never a doubt in our locker room that if we just kept playing hard, kept putting pucks on net, we’d capitalize eventually.”
■ UMass Lowell and Merrimack hosted the Turkey Leg Classic, squaring off with Atlantic Hockey members Bentley and Army. Merrimack (6-6-1) came away with the trophy, rallying from two-goal deficits to defeat Army, 7-3, Friday and Bentley, 4-3, Saturday.
Bentley (7-8) came up short, but it was an impressive weekend for the Falcons and firstyear coach Andy Jones. They opened with a
4-1 win over UMass Lowell Friday in Jones’s first game back at Tsongas Center after serving eight seasons on Norm Bazin’s staff. Bentley then led Merrimack, 3-1, Saturday, but the Warriors stormed back with three unanswered goals. Lunenburg native Alex Jefferies scored the game-winner.
Army rebounded from Friday’s loss to Merrimack to defeat Lowell, 4-2. The River Hawks dropped to 5-8-1, including 1-5 at home, and are averaging just 2.07 goals per game.
■ Northeastern has struggled early on, managing just 20 goals through its first nine games before erupting for 12 in a pair of games at RPI. After skating to a 3-3 tie Saturday, the Huskies scored four in the first period and five in the second to coast to a 9-2 win Sunday to improve to 3-7-1. Jack Williams had two goals in each of the games for NU.
The Huskies hope the offense carries over to league play, where they are 0-7 and have averaged just 1.14 goals per game.
■ No. 4 Boston University (9-4-1) had trouble finding the back of the net in Saturday’s 2-1 loss to Cornell at Madison Square Garden in the ninth edition of Red Hot Hockey. Freshman Doug Grimes had his first collegiate goal for the Terriers, who outshot Cornell, 36-19, but went 0 for 4 on the power play.
■ No. 9 Providence (9-4-2) split its series with Arizona State in Tempe, winning, 2-1, Sunday. Woburn native Riley Duran had the game-winner, scoring his fifth of the season with 2:06 remaining in the second period.
The win snapped a three-game losing streak for the Friars, all of which were by one goal, with two coming in overtime.
“We only trailed six minutes in those games,” said coach Nate Leaman. “We just had to make sure that we still felt good about ourselves and our game, because we’ve been playing some good hockey. It just hadn’t been going our way.”