BOSTON ― No. 19 University of Massachusetts scored in the opening minute of play, but No. 9 Boston University potted the next four straight to defeat UMass, 5-2 at Agganis Arena on Friday night. The loss leaves the Minutemen at 4-2-0, 0-1-0 in Hockey East play, while the Terriers improve to 3-2-0, 1-1-0 in league action.
”I knew to be successful here tonight there was a style of game we needed to play, especially without the puck,” said UMass head coach Greg Carvel.
“It just wasn’t where it needed to be. I thought we got off to a decent start, obviously we scored early, and we were playing alight. Then we take a bad penalty, and this one penalty allows them to score, which changes the momentum on the road. We have a lot of new players who are not used to playing in these games, it was pretty evident to me. The mistakes we made were mostly by our first-year guys. I still like our team. I know we’ll grow into a team that can handle playing these kinds of games on the road, but right now we’re not quite there.”
Junior Ryan Lautenbach opened the scoring just 46 seconds into the first period, snapping the puck past netminder Mathieu Caron off a cross-ice feed from classmates Scott Morrow and Lucas Mercuri.
BU converted on its first power play of the night at the 15:51 mark of the first to tie the score at 1-1 as Lane Hutson found the inside of the far post from the top of the left faceoff circle with Jeremy Wilmer and Ryan Greene collecting the assists.
The Terriers then took the lead just before the intermission as Maclin Celebrini crashed the net on the rush to poke the puck past Michael Hrabal from Wilmer and Hutson at 19:04.
Dylan Peterson then pushed the margin to 3-1 for BU, streaking down the slot to finish off a pass from Nick Zabneh and Wilmer 14:18 into the second.
Greene then added to the advantage with the second power-play goal of the night for the Terriers from Celebrini and Hutson at the 13:33 mark of the third.
Junior Taylor Makar took one of the goals back for UMass when Mercuri found him at the net front for a quick strike 15:10 into the frame.
Luke Tuch then capped the scoring with an empty net goal for BU from Devin Kaplan and Celebrini at 19:02.The Terriers finished with a 36-20 shot advantage and went 2-for-3 with the man advantage, while the Minutemen were 0-for-4.
Hrabal totaled 31 saves for Massachusetts and Caron had 18 stops for BU.
The two teams will be back in action tomorrow night, Oct. 28, at the Mullins Center at 7 p.m.
