ST. LOUIS — For Boston University, the third time really is the charm.
Appearing in its third straight Frozen Four, BU advanced to the finals for the first time in those three attempts, knocking off Cinderella upstart Penn State 3-1 on Thursday at Enterprise Center.
Boston University will face Western Michigan, which upended defending champion Denver, 3-2 in double overtime in Thursday’s opening semifinal.
While Boston University didn’t need to post the dramatic second half of the season that Penn State did, ending the regular season on a 10-1-3 run, it still was forced to turn its season around. That happened with the January arrival of Mikhail Yegorov, who stabilized things in the BU net.
On Thursday, Yegorov was Boston University’s best player, finishing the game with 32 saves.
“We wanted to strengthen the goaltender position,” BU coach Jay Pandolfo said of Yegorov. “We felt he could come in and compete for the starting job. We gave him an opportunity and he never looked back.”
The opening 20 was a feeling-out period, with Boston University holding an 11-7 edge in shots. Neither team found the net, though Penn State’s Aiden Fink had the best look, firing a shot on a 2-on-1 that forced Yegorov to make a moving save with 2:20 left.
Boston University grabbed the game’s first lead, taking advantage of a careless mistake by Penn State goaltender Arsenii Sergeev. Matt Copponi threw the puck toward the net that Sergeev stopped. The rebound, though, wasn’t covered and when Sergeev moved, the loose puck was exposed and Jack Hughes buried it at 1:35 of the second for a 1-0 lead.
That lead doubled nine minutes later when BU came up ice with numbers. The Cole connection struck as Cole Hutson outwaited the defense and slid the puck to Cole Eiserman, who made no mistake, extending the lead to 2-0.
Penn State, however, wasn’t done. Early in the third, Yegorov made back-to-back saves for BU, the second from point-blank range, but a third shot from Nic DeGraves’ stick beat Yegorov high to give the Nittany Lions life with 17:45 left, trailing 2-1.
“It’s hard to end a team’s season,” said Pandolfo. “You knew they were going to push. They’re a team that funnels everything to the net and that’s how they ended up getting that first goal there.
“That gave them life and they started believing. They started putting the pucks through to our net and someone had to do the job and Big Mike [Yegorov] did the job there in the third.”
The Nittany Lions pressed, putting 18 shots on Yegorov in the third, but it was Jack Harvey’s empty-net goal with 59.6 seconds left that sealed Penn State’s fate.
For Penn State, the loss ended a remarkable ride through the season’s second half. Hampered by injuries early in the season, they’re a team that was sitting at 31st in the PairWise Rankings on Jan. 15 yet made a run to the school’s first Frozen Four, an accomplishment nothing short of remarkable.
“We were left for dead not long ago,” said Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky. “For these guys to come back and play in St. Louis is remarkable. Better than that is how they did it.
“They are such great representatives of our university. The way they stuck together in the toughest times was incredible.”
