CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — Vermont and Boston College have both been characterized by strong defensive play this season.
So in the opening game of their Hockey East quarterfinal series, seeing six goals scored between the two in the first 19 minutes was, if nothing else, surprising.
BC’s cruise to the finish, however, was not.
The No. 9-ranked Eagles opened up a 4-0 lead and chased starting Catamounts’ goalie Mike Santaguida (17 saves) en route to a 4-2 win over No. 17 Vermont in front of 3,478 at Conte Forum on Friday night.
It was BC’s seventh win in as many tries against Vermont in the Hockey East playoffs, leaving the Catamounts to fight for their season in an elimination game tomorrow.
“I thought our team got a great start tonight,” Eagles’ coach Jerry York said. “I thought we passed pucks very well. We were going tape to tape and capitalized on some good offensive plays. We were crisp with the puck.”
Vermont provided little defensive resistance through the game’s first 15 minutes, affording BC too much time and space for zone entries, and the Eagles took advantage, exploding for four goals in that span, leading to Santaguida’s exit.
“It was a frustrating game for us tonight,” Catamounts’ coach Kevin Sneddon said. “I thought we started really well, but the story of the game was the three and a half minutes in the second period where we kind of fell asleep. We got walked on a faceoff, we didn’t get a block on a penalty kill, and then we left a guy wide open within the neutral zone for a breakaway.
“For three and a half minutes there we looked like we didn’t know what we were doing, and that was disappointing that we couldn’t stop the bleeding at that point.”
Vermont blocked 10 of BC’s first 43 shot attempts, but only two of the 10 attempted by the Eagles’ top line. Of the eight that got through to goal, Zach Sanford scored on two of them.
Boston College, meanwhile, was smothering on defense, particularly with the play of Mike Matheson, who perhaps didn’t lose a one-on-one battle all night.
The Eagles even got some offensive contributions from the blue line.
At 9:08 in the opening period, Noah Hanifin scored on a gorgeous rush down the right-wing boards to give the Eagles the lead, slipping by Alexx Privitera and sneaking a wrist shot under the crossbar.
“When I got by [Privitera], I saw a little bit of space,” Hanifin recalled. “It was a two-on-one, not sure who was going back door, but it gave me a bit of a lane to get to the net, and I just went up top with it.”
The Eagles opened up a 4-0 margin thanks to a pair of goals Sanford (the latter on a highlight-reel double-deke past Santaguida) and a tally from Ryan Fitzgerald, all in the span of four minutes, chasing the Catamounts netminder 24 minutes into the game.
“From the net out, during that stretch, I didn’t think we were very strong,” Sneddon noted, calling timeout after the fourth goal to substitute Brody Hoffman (12 saves) for Santaguida.
The change in goalies appeared to spark a rally from the Catamounts, who improved defensive coverage and began to win battles along the boards for loose pucks.
A mistake from Thatcher Demko and scrum at the netmouth was all it took for the Catamounts to suddenly be right back in the contest, trailing 4-2 at the end of the second period, but carrying momentum into the third.
“I thought we had a good response,” Sneddon said. “I give a lot of credit to Brody for coming in cold and making some key saves for us.”
Sneddon said after the game that Hoffman would get the start in Game 2 of the series tomorrow night, his first since facing New Hampshire on Feb. 7.
Though the pace of the game was more comfortable for Vermont in the third period, the Eagles smoothed things out in their own zone period and cruised to the finish line.
BC now stands one victory away from reaching its 21st semifinal appearance in 31 years, while Vermont is one loss away from its third straight quarterfinal exit.
