Good things come in threes.
Just ask the Boston University hockey team. Tied at three apiece to start the third period in Friday’s NCAA Northeast Regional Semifinal, the Terriers scored three goals in 3:34 to beat Harvard University and advance to Saturday’s game against the University of New Hampshire.
It was the third time BU beat Harvard this season.
‘It was a typical Harvard-BU game,’ said BU coach Jack Parker. ‘We’ve had three great games with them, and we’ve got to consider ourselves very, very fortunate to win all three games against that hockey team. They put a lot of pressure on you; they’ve got a lot of talent; they’re well-coached. For us to win three games against them is really fabulous.’
Just 45 seconds into the final frame, Mark Mullen broke the tie with a wrister from the left of Harvard goalie Dov Grumet-Morris. Bryan Miller then sent a puck through from the blue line that had eyes for the goal line, slithering through traffic and finding the back of the net for a 5-3 BU lead. Then, just 1:31 later, Frantisek Skladany gave BU a three-goal lead with his team-leading 14th of the season.
‘From our perspective, I have to give credit to them, but I don’t think we had the defensive intensity that we needed to have,’ said Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni. ‘[Six is] the greatest number of goals we’ve given up this year. You don’t win many games giving up six goals. I thought we had some great individual efforts on our team, but not collectively tonight.’
BU took a 1-0 lead early on with a goal from senior Brian Collins that beat Grumet-Morris between the pads. Harvard tied it at one, but Matt Radoslovich gave the lead back to BU with his third goal of the season, coming off a rebound of Ryan Priem’s tight slapper from the point.
The Crimson scored twice to take a 3-2 lead, but thanks to a perfectly placed wrister from Brad Zancanaro, BU tied the game at three.
‘I don’t think there’s any question that the Zancanaro goal was the biggest goal of the game,’ Parker said. ‘It’s 3-2; they got a couple of power-play chances; we’re struggling to get the puck out of our zone; we’re giving up shot after shot off of faceoffs. I was just hoping to get out of the period 3-2.’
That goal came while BU was riding the momentum of another terrific performance by junior goalie Sean Fields, who made several spectacular saves in the second period, including one where he dove back toward the net to snag a sliding puck that was already past him.
‘Sean’s been playing great for us all year; we didn’t expect any less out of him tonight,’ said senior captain Freddy Meyer. ‘He really stood on his head for us tonight.’
‘We won that game tonight because we got absolutely fabulous goaltending,’ Parker added. ‘He made some big saves; he’s turned things around for us a number of times this year.’
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