While it wasn’t pretty, the Boston University men’s hockey team has won three consecutive games for the first time this season.
The Terriers stumbled to the finish line after a strong start against Vermont, ultimately squeaking out a 2-1 win over the Catamounts on Friday night at Agganis Arena.
“Really good first period,” head coach Jay Pandolfo said postgame. “Then we just completely got away from it.”
No. 18 BU (8-7-1, 5-4-0 Hockey East) controlled the opening 20 minutes, outshooting Vermont (4-9-0, 2-5-0 HE) 13-4. Still, Pandolfo called it “disappointing” to head into the first intermission with only a one-goal lead.
After taking two minor penalties in the first 10 minutes of play, sophomore forward Kamil Bednarik opened the scoring with his fourth goal of the season at 14:44 of the first period.
Bednarik rifled home a wrist shot from the right circle to beat Vermont junior netminder Axel Mangbo. Junior forward Jack Harvey and sophomore defenseman Cole Hutson picked up assists on the goal.
“Obviously not the best two penalties to take. I just knew I had to make up for it,” Bednarik said postgame.
The Catamounts settled into the game in the second period, peppering 17 shots on sophomore netminder Mikhail Yegorov, who stopped 25 of 26 shots in the contest. If it weren’t for Yegorov, Pandolfo said, the Terriers would have been down after 40 minutes.
“I don’t know if our guys thought it was going to be easy,” he added. “Give Vermont a lot of credit; they started pushing.”
Despite that, BU extended its lead to 2-0 at 14:38 of the second when freshman defenseman Charlie Trethewey buried his first goal as a Terrier. As the power play expired, he hammered home a rolling puck.
Trethewey has come on nicely for BU as the season has progressed. Red Hot Hockey against Cornell was his best performance of the season, and he followed it up with another quality effort against the Catamounts. The emergence of a young blueliner for the Terriers is crucial, and Trethewey is the standout.
“It’s definitely been a little hard coming into the NCAA,” he said postgame. “But I feel like I’m kind of getting a groove here.”
Pandolfo said he can see Trethewey growing more comfortable on the ice. He added that the freshman has earned increased ice time as the season has progressed, and that opportunity has been a key factor in his improvement.
The Terriers’ power play struggled against a Catamounts team that entered the weekend killing only 71.4 percent of its penalties, the fourth-worst mark in the nation. BU went 0-for-3 in the game.
“It was an execution thing tonight. We just need to simplify it. We’re complicating it,” Pandolfo said of the man-advantage.
Vermont’s best stretch of play came at the end of the second period, as it controlled the puck in the offensive zone, forcing Yegorov to make several difficult saves.
The Catamounts carried their momentum into the third period. At 9:08, freshman forward Jonah Aegerter got the Catamounts on the board. Aegerter beat Yegorov with his shot corralling off the right post and in.
While Pandolfo thought the third period was better than the second, he thought the Terriers “were done having periods like that.”
“We started cheating the game. We stopped playing like a team. That’s what I saw,” he said.