BOSTON — After nearly 22 minutes of extra hockey, Harvard head coach Ted Donato summed up Monday night’s second Beanpot semifinal at TD Garden best.
“As often happens in overtime, it’s not necessarily this great Picasso that ends up in the net,” said Donato, whose team was the defending Beanpot champion for the first time since 1994. “But, there are no bad shots in overtime.”
Boston University freshman Ty Amonte took that lesson to heart 1:55 into the second overtime, equaling the 3-2 final score with a wrister from outside the right faceoff circle that beat Crimson senior Merrick Madsen upstairs.
The goal was Amonte’s fourth this season and puts him just one win away from joining his father, Tony, in the Beanpot winner’s circle. The elder Amonte was the Beanpot’s Most Valuable Player in 1991.
“I wanted to make a backhand saucer pass to Dante (Fabbro), but I knew Coach (David Quinn) would cut my head off,” the Norwell, Mass., native Amonte joked. “So, I just turned it up ice. We’ve been talking a lot about beating guys down to the hash marks and taking the puck wide. I just wanted to get the puck on net, and it went in. It’s a good feeling.”
But two periods earlier, things were not as promising for the Terriers.
Harvard held a 20-4 shot advantage in the second period, but the score remained even at 1-1. In order to clinch a spot in the tournament’s championship game for a fourth consecutive February, Quinn’s club had to step it up.
“It was certainly an entertaining hockey game in a lot of ways,” Quinn said. “For us, it was a tale of two games. … The second period might have been as bad a period as we’ve played all year, so we felt very fortunate that it was a 1-1 hockey game. We had to make a decision: ‘Do you want to play at (4:30) next Monday, or do you want to play at (7:30) next Monday?’
“If we’re going to be successful, we need to play with a pace, need to be physical, do all the things you need to do in hockey no matter what team you are. I thought in the third period and overtime we started to play the brand of hockey we’ve been playing over the last month.”
Thanks to Amonte’s goal, the Terriers will, indeed, play in the late game next Monday in search of their record 31st Beanpot championship. BU’s last title came in 2015 when current Boston Bruin defenseman Matt Grzelcyk beat Northeastern in overtime.
Sixty minutes of regulation time were not enough to decide a winner in a rematch of last season’s final. The teams traded goals within the first 2:04 of the third to knot the score at 2-2.
Just 32 seconds in, senior defenseman Brandon Hickey momentarily put the Terriers ahead with his third goal in as many games. The BU captain drove through the slot and buried the rebound after the Crimson defense could not clear away his initial backhand try.
Harvard tied the score just 92 seconds later, at the 2:04 mark of the third, when freshman Jack Badini finished Nathan Krusko’s rebound after driving hard down the left wing. It would just not be enough.
“I feel badly for our players because they certainly left it all on the ice,” said Donato. “The game was a series of momentum swings. I thought both teams battled, both goalies made some big saves.”
Harvard senior Merrick Madsen totaled 39, with some of his best work came in the third period and the first overtime. He made a combined 23 saves in those two periods, including a no-look, behind-the-back stop on Dante Fabbro’s point shot dribbling along the goal line.
At the winning end, BU sophomore Jake Oettinger made 47 stops, including 19 in the aforementioned second period and 10 in the first overtime. The Crimson had a golden chance to win the game about midway through the first extra session as Oettinger made a pad stop on Seb Lloyd without his stick in hand.
“(Oettinger) was huge in the second period, made some big saves on the penalty kill in overtime,” Quinn said.
“I think our leadership really stood tall and took ownership of the third period and the overtime. You can’t have success and win championships without leadership. There’s a bunch of characteristics you need, and you need leadership. Brandon showed it, the seniors showed it; they showed it off the ice and certainly in their performance.”
A fast-paced first period that saw 25 combined shots on net finished in BU’s favor, but only by one goal as Logan Cockerill banged in the fourth goal of his freshman season at 11:58. Cockerill cut down the right wing and slotted home the rebound that Madsen left in front.
Oettinger’s improvement — from a .902 save percentage at the semester break — has gone hand in hand with the start of the team’s nation-long, eight-game unbeaten streak. BU’s last six outings have been wins. The sophomore pitched a 12-save shutout through the first period before stifling the Crimson’s 10-shot run to open the second.
At the 14:29 marker of the middle frame, though, Harvard cracked the scoreboard on its 27th shot of the night. Junior leading scorer Ryan Donato worked the puck out of a scrum in the left corner and fed the puck to the slot where Ty Pelton-Byce snapped his fourth goal this season over Oettinger’s left shoulder.
