Union forward Olivier Bouchard can’t buy a goal at Brown’s Meehan Auditorium.
For the second straight year at Meehan, Bouchard had a chance to score an important goal late in the game. Once again, he left the ice frustrated.
Bouchard got robbed not by Brown goalie Adam D’Alba, but by defenseman Adam Tichauer with 44 seconds left in overtime. That play helped preserve a 2-2 ECACHL tie Saturday.
In the Dec. 4, 2004 game at Meehan, Bouchard had a wide open net to hit with 1:17 left in regulation that would have tied the game at 1-1. But he missed, and the Bears ended up winning 2-0.
This time, with the Dutchmen on the power play, Bouchard was to the right of the net when he got a nice cross-ice pass from T.J. Fox. Bouchard’s wrister eluded D’Alba, and the puck was in the air and just about to enter the net.
That’s when Tichauer skated over and got his arm on it to keep it from going in.
“I don’t know what to say,” a frustrated Bouchard said. “I got to put those in, and I just don’t. Too bad for the team because we need those points. That’s my job (to score).”
It ended up being a lost weekend for the Dutchmen (4-5-3 ECACHL, 11-10-5 overall). They only got one point in two games. They wasted a 3-2 lead to Yale on Friday and lost 5-4.
“We worked hard, we just didn’t work smart,” said goalie Kris Mayotte, who made 32 saves. “Obviously against Yale, there are a couple of goals I like to have back. But tonight, we didn’t play our style of hockey.”
The Dutchmen looked uninspired in the opening period against the Bears (2-7-3, 3-11-5). It wasn’t the start Union coach Nate Leaman wanted to see.
Brown took a 1-0 late in the first period on Sean Hurley’s power-play goal. Cory Caouette almost made it 2-0 with 1:49 left when he broke in alone on Mayotte. Caouette got Mayotte down, but he put a backhand shot into the goalie’s glove.
“I think we slept walked through a weekend of ECAC play, and we, because of it, only came away with one point,” Leaman said. “Every guy in the locker room is disappointed. We have to make sure that we go into this week of practice and we find our work ethic again because we didn’t have the Union work ethic this weekend. If we’re going to be successful, we need to have that.”
The Dutchmen came back to take a 2-1 lead in the second period. Augie DiMarzo tied it 3:26 into the period. He took a Jason Visser pass and fired it between the pads of a sliding D’Alba. Chris Potts gave Union the lead midway through the period as he banged in a loose puck in a scramble in front of the net on the power play.
But a giveaway behind Union net enabled Jeff Prough to tie the score with 6:12 left in the second.
After a scoreless, penalty-free third period, Brown got a power play 1:30 into the overtime when referee Scott Hansen sent DiMarzo off for cross checking. But the Bears’ negated the power play when Jeff Prough was called for tripping with 1:53 left. That set up the wild finish and another year of frustration for Bouchard.
Union outshot Brown 5-0 in overtime and 42-34 for the game.
“I thought we really didn’t play desperate hockey until the third and overtime,” Leaman said. “I thought we started to play desperate. Other than that, we slept walked through the first 40 minutes.”
Ken Schott covers college hockey for The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y.
