BOSTON -- Monday night was filled with Beanpot history at TD Garden.
In the first of two semifinal games, Northeastern used a 3-1 win over Harvard to advance to their third championship game in as many years. The Huskies have never raised the trophy over three straight years during the tournament’s 68-year history.
The night finished in wild fashion as Boston University and Boston College played into double overtime. While the game went down as the tournament’s first-ever official tie, 4-4, after 65 minutes due to changing NCAA regulations, BU freshman Wilmer Skoog scored 7:20 into the second extra period to lift the Terriers into the title game.
At 7:30 p.m. next Monday, BU and Northeastern will match up for the 14th time with the Beanpot on the line. The most recent of those meetings came two years ago, when the Huskies won the first of their current back-to-back titles.
Here’s what we saw on Monday at TD Garden:
Why Northeastern won: Although Harvard's top power play in the country (30.7 percent entering the game) scored just 5:17 into the first period, Northeastern junior Zach Solow answered with one of his own -- tipping home a point shot by senior defenseman Ryan Shea (Milton, Mass.) -- to tie the game and, ultimately, help his team win the special-teams battle.
The Huskies faced an uphill climb to begin the third period with Harvard on the 5-on-3 power play for the first 1:46, but graduating goaltender Craig Pantano (Bridgewater, Mass.) held the fort with key saves while a pair of defensemen were serving the penalties in freshmen Jayden Struble (Cumberland, R.I.) and Mike Kesselring (New Hampton, N.H.).
“We did get a power-play goal from (Jack Drury), but I feel like as the game went on, we were very reluctant to take pucks (to the net),” Harvard senior captain Nathan Krusko said. “We had some good opportunities, and we can tip our caps to the goalie, but at the end of the day we’ve got to find a way if we want to win these big games.”
Finding a way is exactly what the Huskies did, keeping Harvard to the outside and holding its power-play unit to just five shots. For the game, Northeastern blocked 18 of the 62 shot attempts by Harvard. Kesselring made up for his penalty later in the final period with a crucial clear on a Casey Dornbach rebound attempt.
In the end, the best penalty killer was Northeastern’s goaltender. Fourteen of Pantano’s 27 stops came in the third period while other veterans came through in the clutch.
Fellow graduate transfer Brendan van Riemsdyk’s second goal of the season was the winner with 30 seconds left in the second, coming off a nifty feed from senior Grant Jozefek behind the net. Shea iced the game with an empty-netter at 19:09 of the third. It was a total team effort.
Key players: Stars Drury and Northeastern’s Tyler Madden certainly made their presence known throughout the game. Drury tied for the team lead with four shots. However, coaches often talk about more unheralded players shining brightest on a stage like the Beanpot. That was certainly the case on Monday.
For the Huskies, two graduate seniors were the biggest difference makers in their Beanpot debuts, including the local native Pantano, who began his career at Merrimack.
“They were carrying the play to us a little bit in that third period,” Northeastern coach Jim Madigan said. “We had a bend-but-don’t-break mentality that served us well and I thought our goaltender was our best player. He made a lot of key stops for us. In this tournament you need great goaltending, and we got that tonight.”
Van Riemsdyk, a New Hampshire transfer, admitted he has not had the most productive of seasons in Boston, but he picked a most opportune time to score his first goal since Nov. 1. Despite his struggles to pick up points, he has remained a regular contributor in other ways.
Why Boston University won: The Terriers were just 1-5-2 when trailing after two periods, but they showed a great deal of resolve to remain in the game throughout and eventually earn the chance to play for a tournament-record 31st championship next week.
After BC held a 3-1 lead through 40 minutes, BC scored three of the four third-period goals to send the game to overtime. The team was on a mission to break what currently stands as a current tournament-long drought without a championship: the Terriers have lost to each of their three Beanpot opponents once since their last title in 2015.
“In the first couple periods, we had some good moments and some bad moments, but we came out in the third and played really well,” BU coach Albie O’Connell said. “We established our game, got a better forecheck on and kept some offensive zone time. The guys stepped up, the leadership group and the seniors, and got the guys going in the right direction.”
Regulation had a back-and-forth finish. BU twice erased two-goal deficits, including scoring three straight goals in less than six minutes to take a 4-3 lead in the third. However, Eagle captain David Cotton forced overtime with a tight-angle shot with 57.9 seconds left in regulation.
In the end, the Terriers wanted it more. They put five shots on goal against BC freshman goalie Spencer Knight (Darien, Conn.) during the extended overtime. They made the plays they needed to make and will use the win as momentum going into Friday night’s game against Merrimack in Hockey East play.
Key players: Despite the loss, BC coach Jerry York commended the play of his team’s top line of seniors Cotton, Julius Mattila and junior Logan Hutsko. They combined for 13 shots.
Cotton scored two goals, but it was also a strong night for unsung players such as sophomore Patrick Giles, who had played in just nine games all season before scoring off classmate Marc McLaughlin’s (North Billerica, Mass.) backhand feed just 2:15 into the game.
On the winning side, Skoog has shown a flair for the dramatic in his eight games since coming to the Terriers during the intersession from the North American Hockey League. He scored an overtime winner in his first game at BU and repeated those heroics on Beanpot Monday when he buried Alex Brink’s rebound after charging through the right side.
“It’s just luck that the goals came at that point. Sometimes you have chances, sometimes you score and sometimes you don’t,” Skoog said. “I was lucky to put it in the back of the net tonight.”
The game doesn’t reach overtime, though, without a brilliant play on BU’s final goal of regulation. Freshman Trevor Zegras sent a cross-ice pass through multiple layers of the BC defense and right onto the tape of Robert Mastrosimone on the doorstep with 1:42 left in the third.
“A few, not tons” can make that play, O’Connell said of Zegras. “It was nice that it was on Trev’s stick at that time, but I thought Mastro was terrific all night. He gave that line a spark, went to the net and Z(egras) does what he does. He’s an incredible playmaker.”
Parting thoughts: The Beanpot is a unique tournament. Madigan noted the emotional toll that the ebbs and flows of a game can have on teams, especially as his team’s many Massachusetts players are living out childhood dreams of participating in it.
The Huskies have the chance to make history with their first-ever three-peat next week, but BU will be looking to end a streak in the opposite direction. Going into the late stages against the Eagles, that point came into focus according to BU assistant captain Patrick Harper.
“After the first and second, we didn’t have too much going, but we spoke to the group in between the second and third about resilience,” Harper, a New Canaan, Conn., native said. “We wanted to do it for the guys who only have one Beanpot left. … There was a lot of hope and a lot of fun spirit within the group. We felt like we were going to take it home.”
The aforementioned NCAA regulations were implemented to standardize the format of all regular-season games for the purposes of the PairWise Rankings, but the change added a never-before-seen wrinkle to the Beanpot as no statistics beyond the 65-minute mark (regulation and a regular five-minute overtime) of the BC-BU game -- when it was declared a tie -- will be officially recognized. Skoog’s goal in the second overtime (20 minutes in length) lifts BU to the title game but nothing more.
Part of what previously made the tournament so special was the uncertainty of how long games would take. Two of the past five Beanpots needed multiple overtimes to decide a game.
The rule -- which was not publicized ahead of the tournament -- might take away some of the luster of Boston’s annual battle for bragging rights.
