Men’s Hockey: Slow Start, Big Finish: Terriers Roll Past Harvard 4-1

By Claire Smieszny

Boston University men’s hockey (11-9-1, 7-6-0 HEA) took down the Harvard Crimson (7-7-1, 5-4-0 ECAC) 4-1 on Monday night at Bright-Landry Hockey Center, rallying from an early deficit with four unanswered goals.

“I thought it was a huge win for us,” BU Head Coach Jay Pandolfo said. “Three games in four nights, we’re not used to doing that, and I thought our guys responded very well.”

The Terriers opened slowly, struggling to control the puck in the first period and allowing Harvard to dictate much of the early play. That pressure led to the game’s first goal, when junior forward Ryan Fine picked up a loose puck in the neutral zone after a BU entry was poke-checked. Fine hit senior forward Joe Miller in stride, and Miller entered the zone and beat sophomore goaltender Mikhail Yegorov glove-side from the top of the left circle.

BU responded by tilting the ice, firing nine shots in under two minutes as it pushed for an equalizer. Despite the late surge, the Terriers went to the first intermission still trailing 1-0.

The second period belonged to BU. The Terriers generated multiple rush chances, including a sequence where sophomore forward Sacha Boisvert drove wide and pulled a defender with him to open a drop pass for sophomore forward Cole Eiserman, whose chance went just wide.

BU finally broke through 11 minutes into the frame. Freshman forward Conrad Fondrk gained the right circle and ripped a wrist shot past Harvard goaltender Ben Charette’s blocker to tie the game. “I was actually gonna pass it to [Boisvert], but then I looked at the net and [Charette] was definitely off his angle, and I had to take that shot,” Fondrk said.

The Terriers capitalized on that momentum just over a minute later. With 7:53 left in the period, sophomore defenseman Cole Hutson fired from the blue line, and the puck deflected off freshman forward Jonathan Morello’s skate in front. With traffic obscuring his view, Charette never picked up the redirect, and BU grabbed a 2-1 lead.

Harvard tried to answer on the power play after sophomore forward Jack Murtagh was called for cross-checking, but the Crimson struggled to establish clean entries and sustained zone time, managing only a few scattered looks before the Terriers cleared their lines.

The third period turned into a tight, back-and-forth battle, with both teams generating chances but neither dominating as BU had in the middle frame. Harvard pulled Charette for an extra attacker late in regulation in a last attempt to erase the one-goal deficit.

BU punished the gamble. Freshman forward Ben Merrill stripped a Harvard skater in the defensive zone and slid an empty-netter home to make it 3-1 with 1:37 remaining. Less than a minute later, Boisvert added a second empty-net goal, sealing a 4-1 final and a welcome offensive breakout after the Terriers had managed just one goal across their weekend series with UMass.

BU returns to action Friday for the first game of a home-and-home series against UMass Lowell at Agganis Arena. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m., with streaming available on ESPN+.