On Thursday evening, the Boston College men’s hockey team hosted the Vermont Catamounts at Conte Forum for a weekday Hockey East series. BC came limping into the game with a 2-4-1 record following a series split with Northeastern.
Vermont put a shot past BC goaltender Leo Henriquez pretty quickly, taking a 1-0 lead just 1:17 into the game. Boston College had a few nice possessions after that, but was mostly just going up and down the ice with the other team. Then after a tripping call on Teddy Stiga,
UVM found a powerplay goal that put them up 2-0 just halfway through the first period. Henriquez looked nervous to be making the start and nearly collided with his teammate at one point, but his teammates’ defense was also letting him down.
Soon after that, Kristian Kostadinski gave up a critical turnover in his own end that allowed Vermont to gain a free shot at the goal, which they converted to take a commanding 3-0 lead. Greg Brown called timeout, benched Henriquez for Louka Cloutier, and tried to give a wake-up call to his team. BC played with a bit more intention after that, and even were able to convert a goal when Dean Letourneau got free on a breakaway. Oscar Hemming also got a decent look at the net after that, but his shot went wide and BC took the 3-1 deficit into the first intermission. Things looked a bit better after the Letourneau goal with Cloutier back in net. But they still had a hole to climb out of.
The second period was marred by several penalties, including a bogus embellishment call on Dean Letourneau after he was tripped. An interference penalty on Luka Radivojevic followed soon after, and Vermont scored on the 4-on-3 opportunity. It was former Eagle Michael Hagens that buried it to give UVM a 4-1 lead.
BC got a make-up call pretty quickly after that for a 4-on-3 chance of their own, but didn’t convert. Whenever the Eagles felt like they were finally settling into the game to get something going, they would make another mistake and have to reset. It happened again when Oscar Hemming was called for interference during a promising BC possession and had to kill the penalty.
Eventually Boston College cashed in on another breakaway, this time from Teddy Stiga when he five-holed UVM goaltender Jacob Oster. They controlled the puck for much of the second period and seemed to be on the brink of turning things around. But they still entered the third period down 4-2.
Things didn’t develop very quickly for either team in the final frame. Cloutier’s presence in goal for BC seemed to settle down their defense, but their offensive possessions were chaotic. That resulted in a back-and-forth game in which both teams seemed on the same level, which made those two early goals past Henriquez loom pretty large.
Kostadinski made another costly play when he got beat down in his own end and got called for roughing after taking out his frustrations on the opposing player. BC was able to kill the penalty thanks to some great play by Cloutier, but the time wasted away and left them down by two goals with five minutes remaining.
Greg Brown waited to pull Cloutier until 2:55 was left on the game clock, and by then it was too late. BC got nothing going and eventually UVM’s Tyler Dysart put in the empty-net dagger. Vermont came out with a 5-2 victory. The two teams play again Friday night at 7PM.
