CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — The 17th century scholar Thomas Fuller once said, “A wise man turns chance into good fortune.”
No. 18 Notre Dame certainly had a fair amount of chance in the matchup with No. 3 Boston College, 39 chances to be exact. The Irish’s chances did, in fact, turn into good fortune with the Irish scoring three unanswered goals to close out the game, snatching a 3-1 lead from the Eagles for a 4-3 Irish win.
The Eagles wasted a three-point night from Austin Cangelosi.
“It was a great comeback,” Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson said. “For us to be able to score three goals on one of the better goaltenders in the country.”
Both teams traded goals in the first frame, with Jack Jenkins scoring his first-ever goal for the Irish to open the game. The Eagles answered with Adam Gilmour scoring his fifth of the season on a rocket past Cal Petersen.
The rest of the first and the entirety of the second passed without any further major incident. The third period, however, did not.
When the two heavyweights took the ice for the third, the score was tied at one. The two teams accounted for five combined goals on thirty combined shots in the third period.
The first of the five goals came from the stick of Austin Cangelosi a little less than four minutes into the third period. Teddy Doherty rifled a shot on net. Cangelosi was around the crease to redirect the Doherty shot past Petersen to give the Eagles the 2-1 lead.
The Cangelosi goal appeared to galvanize the junior. Cangelosi had a few scoring opportunities between his first goal and his eventual second. One Cangelosi shot in particular rang off the crossbar after being fired on net from behind the faceoff circle.
A second goal for Cangelosi appeared an eventuality in the course of the first half of the third period. Petersen could only prolong fate for so long. Fate manifested in the form of Cangelosi knocking a Doherty rebound off the back boards past Petersen.
With the red light behind Petersen glowing, it appeared the Eagles, with their winning prowess following their loss against Rensselaer somewhat unimpeachable, had put a seal on their 14th win of the season and Jerry York’s 998th win of his career.
No one told the Irish, particularly Jordan Gross. Just a minute and a half after the second Cangelosi goal, the sophomore rifled a shot from the blue line on the already embattled Thatcher Demko. The puck made it past Demko, and with that goal the Irish made the contest a one-goal game.
With the Big Ten proposal regarding age limits a matter weighing on the collective conscience of the college hockey community, the question was posed to Jackson following the game about his opinion on the matter. Jackson noted his displeasure of having freshman forward Andrew Oglevie going back to the USHL for two additional years as one of the reasons why he supported proposal.
Perhaps the example of Oglevie was the result of lingering frustrations for Jackson. Or, perhaps, the Irish’s game-tying goal jogged the 11th year coach’s memory. That game-tying goal was one that came from the stick of Oglevie, shot a little closer to Demko than the Gross goal that preceded it. Suddenly, the seal that had seemed all too determined to be foolproof had been broken.
The seal was obliterated late in the game. Dennis Gilbert, from the same exact spot that Gross scored from to begin the Irish onslaught, rifled a shot off the crossbar to give the Irish the lead. The Eagles were not able to generate any offensive chances following the late goal, and the Irish were able to close out the comeback win, having had their good fortune turn against them due to too many chances given up.
“We want to finish games, that’s for sure,” York said. “It’s very disappointing that we have a 3-1 lead at the end and we can’t close it out. Give Notre Dame credit, they did some good things.”
The loss was the Eagles’ second of the year, to an Irish team that has historically had a measure of success beating the Eagles. Jackson believed the history of success was but an anomaly for the Irish, but did offer one possible explanation.
“Maybe it is the luck of the Irish.”
Miles Wood was kept out of the BC lineup, along with Chris Calnan and Alex Tuch. Calnan and Tuch were listed as having upper-body injuries. Wood, on the other hand, was taken out of the lineup because of illness, confirmed by York to likely be the norovirus that has spread through BC’s campus following a breakout at a neighborhood Chipotle restaurant.
