With four minutes left to play, Vermont looked poised to pull out a gritty, opportunistic win over Boston University.
Then all hell broke loose.
First, BU started buzzing the Vermont net, and Catamounts goaltender Mike Santaguida lost his stick. Terriers freshman Jordan Greenway set up Matt Lane, who beat the goalie to tie it 3-3.
Next, it turned out that Santaguida suffered a lower body injury at some point leading up to that goal, and he had to pulled. A quick review of the line chart revealed that backup goaltender Pat Feeley had not played a single collegiate minute in any of his three seasons in the program, so he made his debut on the road in the last few minutes of a tie game against an opponent desperate for a win after a dispiriting loss Friday night.
Adding insult to that particular injury, left wing Brady Shaw was then called for five-minute major for charging after he leveled BU defenseman Doyle Somerby, giving BU a power play for the final 3:38. Shaw and coach Kevin Sneddon were clearly irate. All of 14 seconds later, Brandon Hickey scored the game-winner, and BU came away with a 5-3 victory due to three goals in the last three minutes.
In front of 3,765 at Agganis Arena, senior Matt Lane and sophomore Brandon Fortunato led the way with a goal and two assists apiece for the Terriers, while Santaguida made 46 saves for Vermont before departing.
“Nice bounce-back win for our guys,” BU coach David Quinn said. “I liked our game from start to finish for the most part. … Even when we got down 2-0, I thought we were playing pretty well. At the end of the day, we persevered and rebounded from a dismal effort last night.”
“It’s very frustrating,” Sneddon said. “I feel real bad for our kids right now, to be honest with you. I thought they played their hearts out for 120 minutes [this weekend] and deserved a better fate at the end, quite frankly, but I won’t comment further on that.
“It’s disappointing, but I’m quite proud of how hard they played this weekend. This is probably our best weekend in terms of doing all the things that are necessary to win. Unfortunately, and to BU’s credit, they took advantage of our mistakes at the end and capitalized on the power play.
It was the fourth time this season that BU had trailed 2-0 before coming back to tie or win a game. UVM took the lead around eight minutes in when Connor O’Neil streaked up the left wing before firing a shot past Connor LaCouvee that hit the crossbar and caromed around the goal line before going out to Craig Puffer, who knocked in the rebound. That turned out to be a moot point, as a video review revealed that O’Neil’s initial shot had gone in for his first collegiate goal.
Less than three minutes later, BU went down 2-0 when a John MacLeod turnover resulted in Mario Puskarich getting a piece of the puck before Brendan Bradley pounced on it and beat LaCouvee.
The Terriers got that one back at 14:08 when winger Ahti Oksanen, on a new line with Matt Lane and Jordan Greenway, buried Lane’s rebound.
BU tied it in the opening minute of the second period. Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson forced a turnover behind the UVM net and passed to Danny O’Regan in the slot. The senior fanned on his initial shot, but put home the second attempt from about 10 feet out.
The game stayed that way until 10:45 of the third period when a second brutal turnover in the BU end led to another opportunistic Catamounts goal. This time, Charlie McAvoy lost the handle in front of his goalie and Anthony Petruzzelli took a few whacks at it, with the puck trickling past the goalie.
“We have an incredible tendency to give up incredibly eye-opening wow goals,” Quinn said. “If we’re going to go anywhere, we’ve got to take that out of our game. ”
BU ratcheted up the energy with four minutes left, and Brandon Fortunato very nearly tied it on a wraparound attempt with Santaguida out of position and perhaps hurt at that point. Seconds later, Greenway held off a defender behind the goal line while Lane set up in the left-wing circle for a clear shot and score.
That’s when Santaguida had to be removed in favor of Feeley, a 6-foot-7 junior put in a tough spot.
“It’s not like it happened in the second period, and you can see some pucks and get into it,” Sneddon said. “He was thrown right into the fire. He did a good job for us, but it’s a tough circumstance.”
As for the five-minute major, the officials conferred for quite a while at center ice before making the call. After initially going to the penalty box, Shaw seemed enraged when he learned he had been called for the major, slamming his stick into the boards at the Vermont bench before heading down the runway.
“I didn’t get much explanation other than he ran him from the red line,” Sneddon said when asked about what the officials told him. “That’s all I can say about it, but that was the explanation. The linesman made the call.”
Hickey scored on a wrist shot from the right-wing circle seconds later. Then, just as Vermont had done on Friday night, BU wrapped things up with a buzzer-beating empty-net goal. This time, Lane set up Fortunato, and a video review showed that the puck went in with about 0.1 seconds left.
Sneddon described Santaguida as “week to week” due to the injury, raising questions about whether the stalwart netminder will be able to play in Vermont’s home-and-home series with St. Lawrence next weekend.
