Boston College 5, Men's Hockey 1: Friars Marooned Again, Season Over

Chestnut Hill, Mass.- In the early, heavily decisive portion of Saturday’s game, one item after another surfaced at the top of the bubble-laden Friars’ Top 10 “Very Last Things We Need” list. And in equal time, the Boston College Eagles swooped in and took the liberty of checking each item off. It was an updating development so rapid even David Letterman might not have been able to keep pace with it.

A four-goal blizzard within the first fifteen minutes of play climaxed when BC’s mighty mite net-stuffer Nathan Gerbe gathered the puck in his own end, bolted loose to the Friar cage, and then earned a penalty shot when he was tugged by backchecker Pierce Norton. In the one-on-one bid, Gerbe froze with his back to PC goaltender Ryan Simpson before slipping the puck under a kneeling Simpson’s arm, granting the Eagles a 4-0 edge at 14:35.

The Friars compressed the abysmal bleeding afterward, but the score eventually morphed into a 5-1 final, giving BC a 2-0 sweep of the Hockey East quarter-final set and curtaining the 2007-08 installment of the Tim Army Corps.

Between the two butcheries –PC dropped Friday’s series opener by the same score and for many of the same reasons- Army had kept his solution to the goaltending muddle undeclared right up to Saturday’s face-off. In the pre-game warmup, usual starter Tyler Sims led the team onto the ice, hinting that Army was banking on his recovery from an athletic breed of senioritis.

When the Friars reemerged for player introductions, Simpson was the first man on, and the sophomore would perform his first start-to-finish game of the season. But it would pan out in parallel fashion to what proved to be Sims’ last collegiate bow.

By the 2:18 mark of the opening frame, the Eagles were 2-for-4 in terms of shots against Simpson. They first struck at 1:26 when right pointman Mike Brennan absorbed a forward shipment by Brian Gibbons and drilled an ice-kisser for a screening Ben Smith to guide home.

Within another minute, freshman phenom Joe Whitney scooped the remnants of PC’s first shot by Eric Baier, raced it down the far boards and thrust it over to Tim Kunes in the central alley. Kunes left a rebound for an incoming Benn Ferriero to bury.

Six minutes later, with 8:36 expired, Boston made it 3-0 when Dan Bertram ricocheted a face-off win off the near boards and right into the clutch of Carl Sneep at the right circle-top. Sneep’s magnetic slapper turned Simpson to stone as it eluded his mitt.

By the time Gerbe struck, the Eagles were running away with a 12-3 shooting edge, 15-6 at intermission. Afterwards, though, the Friar offense evoked a distinctive rabidity that had not been seen all weekend. In the middle frame, they drenched BC stopper John Muse with 17 registered whacks versus only one Eagle stab at Simpson.

At 2:48, Providence hit the board on their fifth of what would be eleven spaced-out, unanswered bids. Defender Matt Taormina, who had already whiffed twice on one play, discharged a third bid from the center point into a dense forest in front of Muse. Ian O’Connor got a piece of it to guide it home.

 

Other than that, Muse withstood everything that was thrown at him, including a post-whistle hack by a flustered Jon Rheault at 10:23. That move and resultant fisticuffs landed two Friars and two Eagles in the bin with a cumulative 43 penalty minutes –including a major to Rheault an 10-minute misconducts to the likes of Norton, Ferriero, and Nick Petrecki.

The Friars confined the puck to the BC for much of the third period as well, mustering another 14 shots, but cultivated nothing. Around the halfway mark, meanwhile, the Eagles drilled the dagger courtesy of Gibbons. Linemate Gerbe lassoed a feed from Smith out of the far corner and nimbly handed it off to Gibbons, who zapped his second point of the night in low.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Boston College 5, Men's Hockey 1: Mazzolini, Friars Rattled In Game 1

Chestnut Hill, Mass.- As one of their warm-up songs from back home –“No Leaf Clover” by Metallica, specifically- may put it, “the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way.”

The Friars had a most generous six days to complete the healing process that seemed to arise in the latter portions of last weekend’s slipshod series against Boston University. And all words from head coach Tim Army in the pre-playoff teleconference pointed to poise for a second season clean slate.

As it happened in the quarter-final opener with Boston College, however, the uglier part of PC’s regular season finale at BU was merely an ambiguous trailer to “Nightmare on Commonwealth Avenue.” Before a bipartisan crowd of 2,788 at Conte Forum –site of two of their last three far-between wins- the Friars submitted a brutishly executed 5-1 decision to the Eagles. Instead of rekindling their unexplained regular season magic here, they reran the trendier vanishing act and never recovered.

Among other things, Army would end up forking away starting goaltender Tyler Sims in favor of Ryan Simpson for the third consecutive outing. Additionally, Providence lost starting centerman Nick Mazzolini to an apparent head injury and spilled their chance to recompense a then 3-0 deficit on the resultant five-minute power play.

Only 78 seconds into Friday’s contest, Army made haste to use his only timeout as the radiant Eagles were making like the Hawks on District Five. Right at the sixty-second mark, Boston broke the ice as forward Dan Bertram was allowed to cradle the puck the length of the rink and deposit a rebound on Sims’ porch. Joe Whitney took a whack before Pat Gannon finished it off.

The PA announcer was hardly through disclosing the details to that goal before Benn Ferriero accepted a feed from Anthony Aiello at the blue line, strolled into the slot, and leveled home his first of two strikes on the night –three if you count the open-ice blow he would eventually deal to Mazzolini.

After their breather, the Friars weathered that tempest, despite an antsy trio of penalties around the halfway mark of the period that left them shorthanded for an incessant stretch of 4:23. But Army shifted crease custodians at 2:03 of the middle frame when fresh ice lethargy bit his team once more.

Eagles forward Matt Greene hustled after backchecker Eric Baier, stapled him in the near corner, and in effect looped the puck around the Providence cage. It would find its way to Ferriero, who blasted a low rider to the right of Sims.

Ferriero drew the ire of visiting Friar Fanatics at 10:12 when he elbowed Mazzolini at his own blue line, jerking the Friar forward to the ice helmetless and wiped. Even worse, PC’s all-you-can-score man advantage was but 27 seconds young when Ian O’Connor got a two-minute flag for hitting from behind. By the time Ferriero’s sentence was up, three minor penalties had been issued and the Eagles had used a 4-on-3 sequence to make things 4-0.

In the thirteenth minute, after Greg Collins had joined O’Connor for kneeing, BC’s quartet scraped out a head-spinning cyclone in the PC end. The far point patroller Whitney would offer a diagonal feed to Bertram, who laced the puck around the net to Nathan Gerbe, who, unguarded along the right post, slammed his first of two past a helpless Simpson.

The Friars did thaw out in terms of attempts at BC goaltender John Muse (32 saves), giving him his biggest sweat with 13 shots in the second period and eventually stamping a dead-even 33-33 final shot count. But their only red- lamper came with 1:43 to spare in the second on an offensive that was hardly settled and lengthy.

Forwards Jon Rheault and Matt Germain, filling in Mazzolini’s void, left a slippery biscuit at the brim of the Boston zone and defenseman Matt Taormina stepped up to buzz a straightaway slapper past a disassembled Muse.

Chippiness snuck into the final period –one late incident resulted in two roughing minors to each side- as the Eagles sped up the killing process and finalized the 5-1 tally with 6:13 remaining. Gerbe picked up the remnants of a failed PC rush, sizzled past all challengers, and completed a face-to-face burial between Simpson’s legs.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Boston University 6, Men's Hockey 0: MacArthur, Terriers Singe Friars

Apparent remnants of the nose-dive virus that throttled the Bruins in Washington on Monday resurfaced Thursday at Schneider Arena to plague the Friars.

The final shooting gallery favored PC, 26-20 –an uncharacteristic count for both clubs, who came in with the two most active stick racks in the conference. Yet on its first seven allotted stabs, Boston University sculpted a 4-0 lead –the first three of those goals all coming from heat gun Pete MacArthur- by the 7:03 mark of the second period, at which point PC coach Tim Army summoned a time out.

By the start of the closing frame, BU had inched ahead 5-0, the muffled home portion of the audience had condensed considerably, and PC’s backup goaltender Ryan Simpson had succeeded Tyler Sims –who has perhaps taken the last bow of his distinguished collegiate career on home ice.

By night’s end, the Terriers had stamped a 6-0 triumph. For them, it was snappy supplementary redemption from last Saturday’s 5-1 drawback against UMass –where they authorized five goals on a slim 15 shots against and cut off their seven-game winning streak. They also guaranteed that the Friars cannot catch them in their bid for second place in the playoff bracket.

Instead, when these teams reconvene at Agganis Arena on Friday, Providence will be lashing out everything in their hands to preserve a home slot for next week’s quarter-finals. But there are eight other Hockey East teams, three within striking range of the fourth-place Friars, who will have a game in hand until late Saturday.

“We haven’t spent a lot of time (studying) our opponent. We’re a good hockey team when we come out ready to play to our strengths, so nothing changes for us,” said Army. “Obviously, home ice is at stake, but home ice will mean nothing if we don’t come prepared to play the best possible game we can play.”

In the wee minutes of Thursday’s contest, the Friars looked to be scraping out rewards of preparedness, charging up all of the first eight registered shots within 9:05 of play. The Friars’ close shave tempest climaxed with senior captain Jon Rheault dangling the BU defense and coming face-to-face with goaltender Brett Bennett, only to fumble the puck before he could muster a shot.

Afterwards, the Terriers took five unanswered, albeit sparsely distributed, stabs at Sims and converted on two. In the eleventh minute, their top forward unit ran a prolonged grinding session behind the cage that had Bryan Ewing lacing a feed up front to Chris Higgins. Higgins handed it off to his captain MacArthur, who batted it into the gaping right half of the net.

Later, with less than two minutes till intermission, Higgins forwarded the puck across neutral ice to an unguarded MacArthur, who bolted in alone from the blueline and ultimately jammed home his own rebound.

At 4:22 of the middle frame, Ewing again thrust out a feed for Higgins from behind the net. MacArthur again snuck in to the right of Sims and buried Higgins’ feed, polishing his natural hat trick and his linemate’s playmaker trick.

Eighty-five seconds later, Friar Chris Eppich was flagged for holding, inviting the Terriers to another extra-man strike. In another head-spinning tour around the PC zone, Brandon Yip unleashed a low slapper from the straightaway point and watched Nick Bonino catch it on the spot and lasso it around a flopping Sims.

At 15:05 BU’s Jason Lawrence clamped down a fluttering fugitive puck and nimbly raced it down the far alley. He shipped it across to linemate Joe Pereira, who skipped it through Sims’ legs.

Simpson stepped in for the third, getting his first lick of game action all season, and helped to generally compress the bleeding. But Bennett, who had his sweatiest period of the night with 10 shots faced and two penalty kills, pushed everything away while John McCarthy finalized the 6-0 blowout with 10:58 to spare.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press