NEW YORK — No. 16 Cornell and No. 11 Boston University met in what both coaches called a great college hockey game in the fifth Red Hot Hockey match Saturday night, playing to a 3-3 tie at Madison Square Garden.
After a scoreless overtime period, BU won a shootout to capture the Kelly-Harkness Trophy, but the game counts as a tie in the national standings.
“A great hockey game, entertaining, I’m sure,” Terriers coach David Quinn said. “But really a hard-fought game between two great teams and probably fitting that it ended in a tie.”
The Big Red failed to hold leads of 2-0 and 3-2, with BU scoring the final tying goal at 16:05 of the third period. The Terriers’ best chance to win came in overtime, when Cornell’s Christian Hilbrich was called for boarding at 1:03, but the Big Red staved off a relentless power play to kill the penalty.
“It was a great college hockey game,” Cornell coach Mike Schafer said. “We had an opportunity at 2-0 to put them away, but they’re a good hockey team – we knew that coming in, and we gave them some opportunities in the third period. Then we got a one-goal lead and couldn’t hold it, but it was a big penalty kill for us in overtime. We had a lot of guys do a great job tonight.”
A.J. Greer led the Terriers with his first goal of the season and an assist, and Patrick McCarron paced the Big Red with two assists.
The teams played an uneventful first period with no scoring and no penalties before Anthony Angello scored a power play goal at 2:16 of the second off assists from McCarron and Jeff Kubiak to give Cornell (6-1-2) a 1-0 lead. BU’s John MacLeod was in the penalty box for hitting from behind.
The Big Red took a 2-0 lead at 7:26 of the second when Trevor Yates took a feed from Teemu Titinen and beat Connor LaCouvee between his pads. Alex Rauter also had an assist on the play.
Boston University (7-4-3) got on the board at 5:36 of the third period when Bobo Carpenter took a feed in the slot from Greer off a pass from Nikolas Olsson and beat Mitch Gillam to his glove side.
The goal snapped Gillam’s shutout streak at 213:17.
The Terriers tied it at 8:30 of the third when Greer beat Gillam over his left shoulder off assists from Olsson and Charlie McAvoy.
“Our defensemen moved the puck up well and we just kind of put the puck to the net,” Greer said. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
Holden Anderson’s goal at the 11:03 mark off passes from McCarron and Jared Fiegl gave Cornell a 3-2 lead before BU’s Jordan Greenway took a feed from Matt Lane and beat Gillam to tie it at 16:05. Ryan Cloonan also had an assist on the play.
This was the second tie in the biennial Red Hot Hockey series, which began in 2007. BU beat Cornell in 2007, 2011, and 2013.
