On a weekend that saw the women’s basketball team make a huge comeback to win the America East regular season title, and the men’s hockey team finding out they would be playing on home ice in a preliminary playoff series next weekend, the Maine women’s ice hockey team made a huge third period comeback and won in overtime Sunday to win their quarterfinal home series against Boston University.
After splitting the first two games of a best of three, winning 3-2 Friday and losing 4-1 Saturday, Maine found themselves down 3-0 Sunday with less than 15 minutes to play in the decisive third game at the Alfond in Orono. And then Brooke Stacey took over.
Stacey scored a natural hat trick, her first career trick, in a span of seven minutes to tie the game 3-3. Stacey then had an assist to an open Tereza Vanisova in the slot at 4:39 of overtime. Vanisova beat BU goaltender Erin O’Neil with a hard snapshot to complete the comeback and send Maine into the Hockey East semifinals next Saturday.
Maine goalie Carly Jackson made 22 saves in the win. Rebecca Leslie, Victoria Bach, and Natasza Tarnowski had scored to give the Terriers the 3-0 lead. O’Neil made 36 saves in the loss for BU, who ends their season at 14-17-6.
Maine (19-13-5) will advance to play Northeastern at Matthews Arena in Boston Saturday at 4:30 p.m. The Huskies are 17-16-3, and Maine won two of three games head to head with them this year. Boston College at 30-3-3, will face 15-13-9 UConn in the opening game Saturday at 1:30. The Black Bear game can be seen live on NESN Plus. The two semifinal winners will then meet Sunday in the Hockey East title game at 1:30, also to be aired on NESN Plus.
