MANCHESTER, N.H. – Hockey East had dreams of three or even four of its teams going to the Frozen Four in St. Louis after sending a record-tying six teams to the NCAA tournament. The league will have to settle for one: Boston University.
The Terriers beat Cornell, 3-2, in overtime Saturday in Toledo, Ohio to reach the Frozen Four for a third straight year.
Hockey East had a representative in each of the other three regional finals as well, but they all lost, including No. 1 overall seed Boston College falling to Denver, 3-1, in a national championship game rematch Sunday night in Manchester.
Elsewhere, UMass lost to Western Michigan, 2-1, in Fargo, N.D. on Saturday, and UConn fell to Penn State, 3-2, in overtime in Allentown, Pa. earlier Sunday.
In the national semifinals on April 10, it will be Denver vs. Western Michigan at 5 p.m. ET followed by BU vs. Penn State at 8:30 p.m. ET. The winners will meet in the national championship game on Saturday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m. ET.
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The Terriers punched their ticket to the Frozen Four for a third straight year by beating Cornell in overtime, 3-2, on Saturday.
After Cornell tied the game with 5:30 left in regulation, Quinn Hutson played the role of OT hero 6:25 into the extra session when he stepped into a slapper from the right point that beat Big Red goalie Ian Shane through traffic.
Younger brother Cole Hutson had a goal and an assist, including a highlight-reel finish on the power play early in the third period when he sniped a tiny pocket of space over Shane’s shoulder from a nearly impossible angle. Cole Hutson, a Washington Capitals prospect, had six points in the two regional games.
Bruins prospect Ryan Walsh also had a strong regional for Cornell. After scoring twice in their first-round upset win over Michigan State, he opened the scoring against BU by crashing the net and having a rebound bounce in off his hip. It was initially ruled no-goal because the refs thought Walsh batted it in with his hand, but Cornell challenged and got the call overturned. Walsh, a 2023 sixth-round pick, also took a five-minute major penalty for grabbing a facemask, but it didn’t prove costly as his teammates killed it off. He finished his sophomore season with a team-high 17 goals and 31 points in 36 games while averaging nearly 20 minutes per game as the Big Red’s first-line center. He is expected to return to Cornell for another season.
Both goalies were terrific in this game, with Cornell’s Shane saving 40 of 43 shots, while BU freshman Mikhail Yegorov stopped 37 of 39.
BU head coach Jay Pandolfo has now reached the Frozen Four in all three of his seasons in charge since taking over in 2022 – on top of going 4-for-4 as a player at BU from 1992-96. The Terriers have the longest active Frozen Four streak in the country, and will be looking to win their first national championship since 2009.
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BC was the No. 1 team in the country just about wire-to-wire this season, but ended on a sour note with an upset loss to Northeastern in the Hockey East quarterfinals, a narrow escape against NCAA tournament debutant Bentley in the first round on Friday, and now Sunday’s 3-1 loss to Denver.
BC outshot Denver 11-5 in the first period, but it was the Pioneers who took the 1-0 lead just before the intermission when Jack Devine found a trailing Eric Pohlkamp on the rush, and Pohlkamp snapped a shot past BC goalie Jacob Fowler post-and-in.
Denver scored again 2:59 into the second, with James Reeder tipping in a Zeev Buium shot from the point after an offensive-zone faceoff win. The Pioneers appeared to make it 3-0 midway through the second, but BC successfully challenged for an offsides in the build-up to wipe the goal off the board.
The Eagles had a great opportunity for a momentum swing right after that when Sudbury native Teddy Stiga raced in on a shorthanded breakaway, but Denver goalie Matt Davis came up with a huge save. Stiga got another breakaway in the final minute of the second, though, and this time he buried it to cut Denver’s lead to one and finally give the thousands of BC fans in attendance something to cheer about (attendance Sunday night was 6,802 at SNHU Arena, with the vast majority of that BC fans).
The Eagles made a strong push in the third, outshooting Denver 15-2 in the frame, but couldn’t find a tying goal against Davis, who continues to be a Hockey East killer along with the rest of the Pioneers. Buium sealed the win with a late empty-netter.
Denver is now 5-0 against Hockey East teams in the NCAA tournament over the last two years. Last year, they beat UMass in the first round, BU in the national semifinals, and BC in the national championship game. This year, they’ve now beat Providence and BC in the first two rounds to get back to the Frozen Four.
With the win, Denver became the first team ever to win an NCAA tournament game against the same team it beat for the title the year before. Defending champions were previously 0-7 in such rematches.
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In Fargo on Saturday, UMass took a 1-0 lead over Western Michigan on a goal from Bruins prospect Dans Locmelis – who also had two points in Thursday’s first-round win over Minnesota – and carried that lead late into the second period.
But then the game turned when Minuteman forward Aydar Suniev took back-to-back bad penalties (first a boarding, then a hit from behind) less than three minutes apart, the second of which was upgraded to a five-minute major and a game misconduct upon review. The call could have gone either way in terms of being a major or minor, and maybe you’d like to see a little bit of leniency in such a big spot, but Suniev didn’t do himself or his team any favors by even putting himself in that position in the first place.
Western Michigan proceeded to score twice on the ensuing five-minute power play, and that 2-1 score would end up being the final. The Minutemen actually got a five-minute power play of their own right after Suniev’s penalty expired, but unlike the Broncos, they couldn’t capitalize.
Locmelis, a 2022 fourth-round pick, finished his sophomore season with 33 points (8 goals, 25 assists) in 40 games, more than doubling his production from last year.
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UConn, who won their first-ever NCAA tournament game over Quinnipiac on Friday, fell to Penn State, 3-2, in overtime in the Allentown regional final. The Huskies took 1-0 and 2-1 leads, but the Nittany Lions answered each time, including tying the game at 2-2 just 30 seconds after UConn had taken the lead.
The Huskies outshot Penn State 28-13 in the third period and overtime, but couldn’t find a winner against Nittany Lions goalie Arsenii Sergeev, who, ironically, transferred to Penn State from UConn after last season. Matt DiMarsico scored the winner with 2:04 left in the first overtime, off a filthy behind-the-back pass from Charlie Cerrato.