BU will be back at the Garden for the first time since 2015 after dropping Northeastern 3-2 in game two and completing a two-game sweep of the Huskies in almost identical fashion to last night’s game… Just without the overtime.
Coach Quinn jokingly opened his press conference by asking “Should we just replay last night’s press conference?”
BU fell behind 2-0 on goals by Biagio Lerario and Nolan Stevens in the first. From the left-wing dot, Lerario ripped home his first goal of the year off the crossbar, up over Jake Oettinger’s shoulder to give the Huskies a 1-0 lead 2:23 into the game. Later in the frame, Matt Fillipe threaded a pass to Stevens in the slot and from there, the junior forward poked it past Oettinger to make it 2-0.
“I thought we played much better in this first period than we did last night,” added Quinn. “I wish we’d start better, I thought we were really sloppy with the puck. It was turnovers that were really causing us problems and I thought as the game went on we managed the puck better.”
Again, it was a strong night of special teams for BU, scorring twice on the man advantage and a perfect 3 for 3 on the kill.
“We have a great goalie,” said Quinn on why his team was so successful on the kill. “Listen, they had chances. It wasn’t like we hemmed them in and they didn’t have chances. You need a little puck luck too.”
Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson found pay dirt on a nice redirection of a Clayton Keller pass to get BU on the board with 5:22 left in the second on the power play.
NU once again held a 2-1 lead going into the third, but 3:01 into the final period, Nick Roberto tied things up. From the far side dot, JFK found Roberto at the top of the near side circle, where he was able to collect the pass and torch NU goalie Ryan Ruck blocker side for his fifth goal of the year.
It once again looked like things might go to overtime, but JFK drew a hooking call with just 1:34 left to send BU back to the power play.
Charlie McAvoy started the power play setup with the puck at center point before moving it to Chad Krys at the top of the left circle. Krys then worked it down to JFK along the goal line, where the Swede tried a stuff attempt on Ruck that was stopped. The ensuing rebound kicked out to Krys in the low circle and the freshman defenseman was able to hammer home his fifth goal of the year with just 24.9 seconds left to give BU a 3-2 lead.
“It's been a good couple days for us on the power play,” mentioned JFK. “It’s gonna be important in these games to have a power play that’s working and be able to score goals like this one and last night.”
NU coach Jim Madigan had a 40-second press conference following the game and was clearly frustrated with the late penalty call, saying “I really can’t talk much more about the game. I can’t talk about this series without two calls that really didn’t go our way and for me, that was the difference in the game and in the series.”
BU will play either Boston College or New Hampshire depending on the Lowell-UNH result tomorrow night. A Lowell win and BU and BC will be the late game. A UNH win will pit the Wildcats and Terriers in a rematch of the 2015 semis.
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