Trevor Zegras celebrates his power-play goal against UMass Lowell. Photo by Jenna VanSickle.
The Boston University men’s hockey team exploded with five goals in the final 14 minutes to defeat No. 12 University of Massachusetts Lowell 5-0 at Agganis Arena on Friday night.
BU head coach Albie O’Connell said it was one of the best performances from his Terriers (9-8-5, 6-4-4 Hockey East) all season.
“I thought overall we played a pretty thorough game from the drop of the puck,” O’Connell said. “It’s the smartest we’ve played all year.”
After doubling the River Hawks (13-7-4, 7-4-3 Hockey East) in shots on goal 24-12 through a scoreless 40 minutes, the Terriers finally broke the ice 6:47 into the third period through freshman forward Ethan Phillips, snapping home his second goal of the season.
Phillips said he knew a goal was coming.
“We were playing a good game,” Phillips said. “We just kind of had to stay the course and we knew we’d finally get one.”
Two minutes later, UMass Lowell junior forward Connor Sodergren was assessed a major penalty, joining sophomore defenseman Chase Blackmun in the box. Over the ensuing five minutes, BU would break the game open.
Freshman forward Trevor Zegras fired one in from between the circles with BU skating five-on-three 16 seconds into Sodergren’s penalty, and senior forward Patrick Harper followed suit with a wrister from distance that found its way in and a rebound score less than three minutes later.
To O’Connell, BU’s breakthrough resulted from his team’s aggressiveness in shooting the puck, which the head coach has preached throughout the season.
“If we get a shooting mentality with that group, we’ve got enough skill to retrieve it and make plays off it,” O’Connell said. “We just kept shooting, and we got traffic [in front of the net].”
With the power-play flurry putting BU up 4-0, freshman forward Robert Mastrosimone drew another River Hawk penalty with 2:13 to play and converted on the power play that followed, punctuating a move by BU’s all-freshmen third line, including Phillips and Wilmer Skoog.
Finishing with a shots on goal margin of 35-17, the Terriers earned their first shutout since November as freshman goaltender Ashton Abel picked up his first collegiate clean sheet.
Only arriving at BU a month ago, Abel said he was proud of his unbeaten effort in his first start on home ice.
“Yeah, it feels pretty good,” Abel said. “It’s something I’ve worked for my whole life.”
O’Connell said he was just as satisfied with the freshman’s play.
“I just thought he managed himself and managed the game really well,” O’Connell said. “That’s two good starts in a row for him, so hopefully he’ll continue that.”
On the opposite bench, UMass Lowell head coach Norm Bazin declined to speak with the media after the game.
With the win, BU is now within one point of the fourth-place River Hawks in the Hockey East standings. The Terriers will be looking to leapfrog UMass Lowell when they face off again on Saturday night, but O’Connell said it won’t be easy.
“We know tomorrow night is going to be a really tough one in their building,” O’Connell said.
Puck drop is on Saturday at Lowell’s Tsongas Center at 6 p.m.
Continuity of lines and D men pairings = win. Simple.
Yes SOCC, these look to be the lines they’ll go with, aside from probably Armstrong in place of DeBoer on the top line. Continuity is crucial, and they might be finding it in the crease as well…
Wll maybe not so simple Caesar.The Terriers have shown flashes of greatness this season but this was their most complete performance and against a good team. I attended but unfortunately did not see the 3rd period ( I live on cape Cod and wanted to get home early) so I missed the goal barrage at the end. While dominating in play and in shots on goal I thought it would be a wasted effort since BU could not score and were up against a very good goalie in Wall. The first goal by Phillips was evidently the spark they needed to complete the rout. Now lets see if they can keep it up since the mark of a really good team is consistency. If they can string a a few showings like this together they can move up to home ice in HE and in the pairwise rankings. I would consider them a beanpot favorite as well. Albie should consider keeping Able in goal for a while since he has quite consistent since his arrival, 2 SO, and seems to have the hot hand.
Sorry to hear you missed the goals Vito but good to hear you were there, and you said it exactly right. They’ve had encouraging performances like this in previous games, but haven’t been able to follow it up the next night (UMass being the obvious example). Maybe tonight can be their breakthrough. Beanpot favorite is a little strong, but yes, getting hot at the right time here could be huge for momentum in that tournament. Based on what Coach O’Connell told me on Thursday, I’m expecting Abel will go again tonight. We’ll see how he does in his first complete back-to-back.