ORONO- Shane Lachance scored an extra attacker goal with 20.6 seconds left in regulation on Saturday night, as #11 Boston University earned a 2-2 men’s Hockey East tie with #7 Maine at Alfond Arena. The Terriers would earn the extra conference point by taking a shootout 1-0, but the Black Bears would still end up taking four out of a possible six points on the weekend.
Unlike Friday night in 5-2 Maine win, where the Black Bears scored the first four goals to take control, it was Boston University opening up the scoring on Saturday. Cole Eiserman notched his seventh goal of the season on assists by Kamil Bednarik and Tom Willander at the 10:00 mark of the first period to make it 1-0 Terriers. Eiserman had a chance to put his team up a pair just over three minutes later on a turnover, getting free for a breakaway on Maine goalie Albin Boija but Boija stopped it with his pad.
The hosts evened it up at 16:35 of the stanza on the powerplay. A shot-pass by Josh Nadeau from just inside the right point was stopped by the pads of BU goalie Mathieu Caron, but he couldn’t control the rebound and Nolan Renwick was there to the right of the netminder to roof a backhander through bodies and into the net at 16:35. It was the fifth of the year for the senior forward, and the 20th of his career.
Maine took their only lead of the night at 9:56 of the second period. Sully Scholle from the right point passed one down low to Oskar Komarov in the low slot to the left of Caron. Komarov then dangled a quick backhand to forehand move and a pass to a wide open Anthony Calafiore for an easy tap-in goal to make it 2-1 Black Bears.
The score remained the same for the next almost 30 minutes, but before that Maine has several other great opportunities to extend their advantage including a powerplay early in the third period with some good puck movement that they came up empty on. Boston University would pull Caron with 1:31 to play that led to the tying tally by Lachance. Boija made the original save off his chest in front, but the puck bounced down and was free in the low slot as Lachance pounced on it to slam it into the back of the cage to send the game to overtime.
Maine had the better chances in the five-minute 3 on 3 extra session, and BU also had a good opportunity that Boija stopped as both goalies were good all night long in leading up to what ended officially as a tie. Ryan Greene beat Boija in the fourth round of the shootout that gave the Terriers the extra Hockey East point, and a total of two points out of the two game series.
Boija made 20 saves for Maine, while Nadeau, Lynden Breen, Scholle, and Komarov each registered one assist. Nadeau left the game in the second period with an upper body injury and didn’t return. The Black Bears went 1-4 on the powerplay. Willander had two assists for Boston University, while Bednarik and Cole Hutson had one each. Caron made 30 stops in net, including stopping all four in the shootout. The Terriers are now 5-5-1, 2-2-1 in Hockey East and went 0-2 on their extra man chances. Maine sees their record stand at 7-2-2 and 4-2-2 in league play, and will hit the road for a single game next weekend when they travel to the Whittemore Center in Durham to battle the UNH Wildcats on Friday night at 7 p.m. Chris Lessner will also be on the road at UNH for the Hockey East matchup and will provide live updates, a recap, and postgame video interviews.
All photos by Anthony DelMonaco/Highlight videos courtesy of MaineIceHockey on X/Video interviews by Chris Lessner
