Eagles complete the weekend sweep with a big win
The Boston College men’s hockey team completed their weekend sweep of Maine on Sunday afternoon, winning in far les dramatic fashion than they did on Friday night by a 3-0 score. As has been the winning formula, the Eagles got goals from some of their big forward names while playing a very solid defensive game with Fowler picking up his third shutout of the season to make it a perfect weekend over the fifth ranked Black Bears.
For the second time this weekend, the two teams skated to a scoreless first period. It wasn’t the most exciting period of hockey, but there were a few good chances at either end that both Fowler and Maine goalie Albin Boija had to make some nice saves on. BC had three power play chances throughout the period but came up short on all three while managing to kill off the only man advantage that the Black Bears had over the first 20 minutes.
The second period started off in a similar fashion, with neither team able to generate a whole lot in terms of offense for long stretches of time. It was – perhaps unsurprisingly at this point – Ryan Leonard who finally got the scoring started, when he fired an absolute laser of a shot from the top of the circles just under the crossbar for his fifth goal of the season to make it a 1-0 game with 9:21 remaining in the period. BC looked like they had a bit more jump in the shifts immediately following the goal, as they had a few more good looks at the net from Leonard, Teddy Stiga, and a few others, but they were unable to put anything else past Boija and had to settle for a one-goal lead after two periods of play.
Andre Gasseau did end up giving BC their two-goal lead with about 11 and a half minutes remaining in regulation, scoring his second goal of the weekend and third of the season to give the Eagles some insurance. Gasseau picked up a loose puck after a great bit of forechecking from Will Vote created a turnover and managed to beat Boija with another perfect shot just under the crossbar. BC played essentially a perfect defensive game from there, refusing to give Maine any kind of dangerous looks on net and spending the majority of the time in the offensive zone before Gasseau iced things with an empty net goal to give BC a 3-0 win.
This was a huge win and a great way for the Eagles to close out what was a big first series of Hockey East play. Maine came into this weekend undefeated and ranked #5 in the country, and they’ll likely be right near the top of the conference all season, so coming away with two wins in regulation could prove massive in the coming months. This win improves BC to 7-1-0 on the season and 2-0-0 in Hockey East, as they have come through an absolutely brutal schedule to start the season looking every bit as strong as we could have hoped. The Eagles will be back at it next week when they have their first conference road game of the season on Friday night against UConn.