CANTLON: (SAT) UCONN RALLIES TO BEAT BU IN OVERTIME 

CANTLON: (SAT) UCONN Rallies To Beat BU In Overtime

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BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

HARTFORD, CT – What started out as a slow and boring contest ended with a wild third period where the UConn Huskies (15-16-2 overall, 11-11-1 HEA) fought back from a two-goal deficit and won in overtime 5-4 over the visiting Boston University Terriers off a spectacular solo-effort by Maxim Letunov on Saturday night.

The first-ever UConn overtime win at the XL Center was witnessed by 7,372, the third largest home Hockey East crowd and the best of the season.

On the game-winner, Letunov picked off a bad clearing pass from the Terriers, walked it in and with an angle on BU goalie, Jake Oettinger, beat him high to the blocker side off a sweet backhander at 2:51 of overtime. The goal was Letunov’s eleventh of the season and give the Huskies their seventh win in a row.

Huskies’ Head Coach, Mike Cavanaugh, teased his junior forward sitting to his right, “I have been on Max to shoot backhands and he finally did tonight.”

The junior Russian had a three-point game (a goal and two assists) and acknowledged his coach’s professorial shooting requests. “I have a tendency not to shoot it (the backhand). Coach has been on me a few times,” Letunov said while smiling. “I thought I could score. There was an open lane. I was just trying to get in on the net. I’m glad it went in.”

“(The puck) was bouncing a bit at first, but I was also trying to shoot it as quick as I could (to surprise Oettinger).”

But the winner would never have happened had The Huskies quit when they were down by two goals for the second time in the match. The team scored their much-needed goals in a 4:09 span.

Letunov was high in the offensive zone and settled down a bouncing puck. Kasperi Ojantakanen was high in the slot and redirected the long-distance wrister that eluded Oettinger, who was looking left snapped as the puck sailed past him to bring UConn within one.

It was Ojantakanen’s fourth goal of the season.

BU (15-13-3 overall, 10-8-3 HEA) must have been having flashbacks of Monday’s Beanpot loss. Substitute the Huskies faithful, clearly the seventh man for the team on the night, for the crazy Northeastern supporters and it led to the same result.

“I certainly can’t say enough about the crowd,” senior Spencer Naas said. “In all of my four years here, they were always good to us and supportive. I remember my first game here against BC, that was unbelievable. Tonight reminded me of that. It was crazy out there and they gave us that push at the end there. (The crowd) certainly contributed to the win tonight. It felt good to get a win like that in front of so many people.”

On the goal that knotted the game, the team once again took advantage of a long-range shot on the powerplay to tie it at four.

Sasha Payusov took a pass from Letunov and circled to the top of the offensive zone. Oayusov fired a 45-foot wrist shot low and along the ice with lots of traffic in front of the net. The goal became his team-leading 12^th of the season and sent the home crowd into a frenzy at 14:23.

Mental toughness while facing adversity is a critical component of any sports team.  This Husky group has had a lot it this year and this game might have been the most shining example of it.

“No doubt about it,” said Cavanaugh. “We have never doubted this group, since I have been here, never once. Even when we were down 10-0 (in a game), they still competed. I can say this team never once packed it in or quit playing. They have always played hard and ground it out. It’s a hallmark of this program. We grind harder and longer than our opponent, and that’s our goal every night.”

The Huskies came out charging at BU in the third period and got themselves an early power play and made it count.

‘We had 25 shots over the first two periods,” Cavanaugh said. “They either went wide or were blocked. I told the kids we got to get pucks on the net.”

A well-executed powerplay saw Brian Freeman come off the left point. The right-handed shot found Max Kalter open. Kalter wasted little time dishing it back out in front to Naas, who snapped home his eleventh goal of the season at 5:43. That extended his personal point-scoring streak to seven games.

“We knew we were still in it. You try to keep things simple, get pucks on net. We have shown in the past we were never out of games and have come from behind in games. We had just keep plugging away and doing our thing,” Naas remarked.

17 seconds later, the Huskies, gave it right back.

UConn got caught running around in its own zone. The Terriers sent a shot to the right of UConn goalie, Tanner Creel’s net. Ty Amonte, the son of former New York Ranger, Tony Amonte, jammed the puck into the end that Creel couldn’t control and before Corey Ronan could fall on top of Amonte, in a vain attempt to disrupt his shot attempt, to establish their first two-goal edge.

Creel (27 saves) is reminiscent of former Boston Bruin, Tim Thomas. His style of goaltending relies on speed and athleticism and not solid positioning. Creel made several big stops on Brady Tkachuk and Gabriel Chabot and other times challenging the shooter. He made BU shooters miss three open chances missing the net entirely.

Creel’s personal record since taking over for the injured Adam Huska back in mid-January is 6-1. Four of those wins have now come against nationally-ranked teams from Hockey East. The Huskies have beaten Providence, Northeastern, BC, and BU.

Coaches and players always talk about, “the small plays” when scoring a goal. With a two-goal deficit, the Huskies had to get to work. The first goal was a textbook example.

Defenseman Adam Karaschik’s hit forced a turnover. UConn quickly transitioned from defense-to-offense and got out of their end of the ice and into BU territory.

From behind the net Payusov left a pass up the middle. Spencer Naas stepped right into it with a blistering snapshot over Oettinger’s glove hand tying the game at one.

The Huskies are without the services of Adam Huska for the rest of the season. They’ve seen the best and not so best Tanner Creel has to offer in net.

At 5:01 Creel made spectacular butterfly glove save on the Terriers Hank Krone. On the very next shift, just twelve seconds later, Bobo Carpenter was in the slot and smacked home his 18th of the season off a pass by Gabriel Chabot at the right side of the net. Carpenter beat his check to get in the clear while Creel was lying on his stomach in the crease.

BU defenseman, Brien Diffley, came down the right-wing side before slipping his shot past Creel. The Pack netminder should have had it, but he kicked the puck into his own net. The play was aided by defenseman Adam Karaschik who went for and connected with a big hit but left the lane open for Dieffly to take the shot. The goal came at 7:27 and was Dieffly’s second of the season. It gave the Terriers a 3-1 lead.

The first period was devoid of much in the way of quality shots from either school. There were just six in total for almost two-thirds of the period. It surprised no one that the first real shot found the back of the net. It came from the BU Terriers.

At 14:01, while on their first power-play of the night, Ridgefield-native, sophomore, Chad Krys was at the left point and whistled a 50-foot wrister past Creel to the shortside. Creel was thoroughly screened by the Terriers’ Shane Bowers.

The Huskies were held to just two shots for most of the period. In the last two minutes, they got their best chance and it didn’t count as Letunov’s shot hit the post with 2:15 left.

The only other shot of significance came off the stick of BU’s Carpenter. He cut from the left-wing to the middle of the ice and had his wrist shot gloved by Creel with 1:32 remaining.

NOTES:

The Huskies conclude their regular season next Thursday against UMASS-Amherst at 7 pm. A credible source told Cantlon’s Corner that Huska is pushing to start next Thursday.

Huska suffered a broken left wrist, his catching hand. It seemed reasonable to assume his season was over. Huska was taking shots with the injured wrist during full practices this week with his wrist heavily immobilized.

If Huska does play, it will have a modern-day Willis Reed-like moment.

UConn held its senior night where they honored nine graduating players. The eight are; Spencer Naas, David Drake, Kasperi Ojantakanen, Tanner Creel, Johnny Austin, Jesse Schwartz, Corey Ronan, Jeff Wight and Derek Pratt.

“The greatest legacy you can leave is that when they first came to this program the goal was just to compete in games like this,” Cavanaugh said while paying homage to his first graduating all UConn Hockey East squad. “Now the program expects to win games against programs like Boston University. The legacy all nine of them will leave to this program is changing things from hoping to win Hockey East games, to expecting to win Hockey East games. I can’t thank all nine of them enough.”

The Huskies are down to one regular season game remaining and are now are in a three-way tie for fourth place with the Maine Black Bears and BU. All of the teams have 23 points.

For UConn to have a first-round series at home, they cannot finish lower than eighth. To earn a first-round bye, they must finish no lower than fifth in Hockey East.

The Terriers and Maine each have two games in hand. Maine uses one of those at home against BC on Saturday night (Fox Xollege Sports 7:30 pm) with BU on the road at Merrimack.

They also have to worry about the UMass-Lowell Riverhawks. They are in the Huskies’ rearview mirror behind by just three points in 7^th place. They also have two games in hand and will use one of those hosting Providence Saturday night

New Canaan native and Avon Old Farms product, Pat Harper, (58 points in 58 career games) is on the injured shelf.

Terriers are also without giant Jordan Greenway who’s playing for the US Olympic Team who play the OAR team (Olympic Athletes of Russia) at 7 am eggs, bagels and hockey for breakfast perfect.

Three other former Terriers are on the US team Matt Gilroy, John McCarthy, and Chris Bourque.

Terriers now lead the series 5-3-2

The Terriers were ranked 20^th in the USHCO.com poll, but not in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll.

The Huskies got a commit for next year in center John Wojciechowski from the Langley Rivermen (BCJHL). The Larchmont, NY center is 6’4, 205 pounds in 52 games has 12 goals 16 assists for 28 points and 35 PM entering the weekend. He will begin matriculating at UConn in the fall.

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