It was downright baffling at times and a bit too close for comfort by game’s end. But when the final horn sounded in Worcester on Sunday night, only one thing mattered: Boston College, courtesy of its prolific offense, is heading back to the Frozen Four with its national championship dream still intact.
The final count, which read 9-7 in the Eagles’ favor, looked more like a football score than anything else. The teams set several NCAA records and combined for 16 goals, 78 shots, and countless Grade A scoring chances. Three Yale goaltenders saw time, none escaping the game with a save percentage higher than .800. Only BC’s John Muse, who managed to weather 32 Bulldog shots, withstood the offensive furor well enough to emerge victorious.
“The games at the national level come in all different styles,” said BC head coach Jerry York, as he opened the postgame press conference. “The goal is to win and advance. Would I like a 1-0 game over a 9-7 game? To me, it doesn’t matter. I just want to win games.”
“It was just one of those nights where whoever scores the most goals wins, and we did it,” said BC assistant captain Ben Smith. “We had a lot of good and a lot of bad tonight. The good thing is we came out on the right side of it.”
The outburst came on the heels of a gritty 3-1 win over Alaska in the first round. But one day after defense and goaltending carried York’s balanced team, it was the offense’s turn to shine.
Not that anyone in the DCU Center anticipated otherwise. Yale entered Sunday’s game first in the nation with 4.09 goals per game, and BC came in ranked third with 3.87. Certainly, goal scoring was expected. Just not at the rate by which it accumulated.
The onslaught began when center Brian Gibbons broke free from the BC zone off a pretty pass from linemate Cam Atkinson and skated down the left wing. Gibbons took advantage of the open ice and fired a low snap shot past Yale goaltender Ryan Rondreau, who was making just his second start since Nov. 21.
The tally was Gibbons’ first since Feb. 21 when BC defeated Merrimack, 7-1, and it sparked an explosion from the Eagles’ top scoring line of Gibbons, Atkinson, and Joe Whitney. The linemates combined for six goals, after having registered just one in the prior four postseason games.
But the Gibbons line was far from the only productive unit against the Bulldogs. The team’s balance was on full display, and the trio of Smith, Jimmy Hayes, and Chris Kreider scored twice, both courtesy of the 6-5 Hayes. The team’s postseason scoring leader tallied two goals in a 23-second span to give the Eagles an insurmountable 9-4 lead in the third period.
“Winning hockey games is [all about] putting teams away,” York said.
And armed with a five-goal advantage in the third period, the Eagles had all but put the Bulldogs away.
It did not come easy, though. Yale mounted an aggressive counterattack, notching three goals in a five-minute stretch to pull within two at 18:38. Forward Mark Arcobello matched Atkinson with a hat trick of his own at 13:32, before the Bulldogs scored an even-strength goal minutes later to pull within three goals.
From that point forward, Yale mostly played with an extra attacker on the ice, as Bulldogs’ head coach Keith Allain elected to pull goaltender Jeff Malcolm.
York countered by calling a timeout, and afterward, BC’s defense recovered. The forecheck improved, as the first line of Matt Price, Matt Lombardi, and Barry Almeida kept double-shifting. And even though the Bulldogs controlled the puck throughout the final minutes, Muse made several key saves to preserve the victory.
“John probably wishes he had a few of those goals back,” York said. “[But] they had some phenomenal goals and John made some critical saves. He competes well. Fact is, he’s a winner and he’s going to the Frozen Four.”
So, too, is the rest of BC’s team. And to reach Detroit, York’s players have shown a remarkable ability to win by playing several styles of games. In the postseason, the team has now played a pair of games for three consecutive weekends. In each stage, one game has been offensive, the other defensive.
“Being able to play both types of games, that’s going to help us moving forward,” York said. “Being able to gut it out, like we did yesterday against Alaska, and then being able to use our offense and our firepower to win a 9-7 game.”
It is a trait that few teams possess. But it is a quality that York’s most successful Frozen Four teams have employed.
“There’s been a lot of stress and tough, difficult games to get to this point,” York said. “We’ll look at the other Frozen Four runs. It’s always interesting, and we’re very excited to continue. We have two more games for a national title, and we’d certainly like to achieve our goals this year.”