Men’s Hockey: Kelley-Harkness Stays on Comm Ave, BU Ties Cornell 3-3
By: Jake Reiser
Last night was the first of four times this season that the Boston University Terriers skated to defend a trophy. The 5th Red Hot Hockey featured the No. 11 Terriers against the No. 16 Cornell Big Red at Madison Square Garden in New York City. BU played to keep the Kelley-Harkness Trophy on Commonwealth Avenue, and in a ceremonial shootout, they did. But the game itself played itself out in as much of a roller coaster as any game this season, skating to a 3-3 tie in the eyes of the NCAA.
The first period was quick, with not many stoppages of play and back and forth chances for both teams alike.
Coach David Quinn said, “Early on, I thought they were controlling play for the first 10 minutes, then we started getting our legs under us a little bit.”
Just 25 seconds into the second period, John MacLeod took a hitting-from-behind penalty, and Anthony Angello connected on a mid-slot tip of Patrick Mccarran’s shot to make it 1-0 Cornell. The Big Red carried momentum and five minutes later,Trevor Yates followed up a wrap-around from Teemu Tiitinen on BU starter Connor LaCouvee and put his team up by two.
The Terriers had their chances after each goal to score on power plays, with an interference minor on Holden Anderson and a cross-check on Christian Hilbrich, but couldn’t capitalize. BU came up big on the penalty kill when it suffered one of quite a few too many men on the ice calls this season, and took it into the third down by two.
A little over five and a half minutes into the third, Nick Olsson, back after missing four games since his arm injury at Providence College, carried the puck into the offensive zone in a 3-on-2. Olsson centered the puck to A.J. Greer, who subsequently dished it to Bobo Carpenter at the bottom of the hash marks to the right of Cornell goalie Mitch Gillam. Carpenter deposited the puck into an empty net to cut the Cornell lead in half. With that goal, the Terriers ended Gillam’s shutout streak coming into tonight at 213 minutes and 17 seconds of game play.
Under three minutes later, Olsson sent a cross-ice feed to Greer, and he shot it short-side on Gillam, who couldn’t push across the crease enough to make the save, tying the game. In a roller-coaster third period, the Big Red took the lead again, as Holden Anderson tipped one on the doorstep past LaCouvee with 8:58 left, but Jordan Greenway pushed one through the pads of Gillam with 3:55 to go, sending the game to overtime tied at 3.
“Getting my first goal here is like getting the monkey off my back,” Greenway said.
BU had a tremendous chance to end the game on a power play, as Hilbrich went to the box for boarding, but CU killed it off. The Terriers went 0-4 on the power play on the night but took 14 shots on the man advantage. The game goes into the record books as a tie, but the teams held a shootout for possession of the Kelley-Harkness trophy. Both Jakob Forsbacka-Karlsson and McCarron were denied in the first round. Danny O’Regan scored on two forehand-backhand dekes and a shoulder fake, but Jeff Kubiak answered on LaCouvee. Ahti Oksanen scored glove side without too much stick handling, and Tiitinen capitalized to keep it going. Matt Lane took a serpentine route and went stick-side on Gillam to score, and LaCouvee gloved a chance from Matt Buckles, keeping the trophy at Agganis Arena.
“Great game. Entertaining, I’m sure. Heart palpitation as the game continued, but really a hart fought game, two really good hockey teams.” Quinn said.
The Terriers come back into action for two home games this weekend against the Vermont Catamounts. Puck drop is at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, and 4:00p.m. on Saturday.