With the Northeastern Huskies down by one with only 10 seconds left to go many of the 5,173 fans at Matthews Arena began to file out of their seats.
On the ensuing face-off Chad Costello took a shot through traffic and Mike Morris buried the rebound to tie the game with only 2.6 seconds left on the clock. Northeastern had tied cross-town rival Boston College at what would seem the last possible moment. It was a penalty filled, action packed, and all around great game of hockey.
“It was a crazy game…I’ve been coaching for 18 years, and I’ve never been involved in a game as exciting as this was,” Northeastern head coach Greg Cronin said.
Boston College opened up the scoring in the 1st period when Ben Smith put in the rebound from a Brett Motherwell shot. Smith had tons of space to move and find the net as BC was on a 5-on-3 advantage. Benn Ferriero also collected an assist on the play.
Northeastern evened the score with less than 30-seconds to play in the first when Randy Guzior found the back of the net. Guzior came down on BC Goalie Cory Schneider’s right and picked the lower left corner of the net and found his mark from about 20 feet out. Kyle Kraemer collected the assist.
Northeastern started the second with 4:49 of power-play time as Mike Brennan was taken off the ice at the end of the first with a five-minute major for boarding. Even though NU could not convert, they still dominated the play. With the momentum on their side Northeastern grabbed the lead with less than three minutes left the second period.
Chad Costello came in on a quasi-breakaway and shoved the puck between Schneider’s five-hole before being slammed into the goalie by the BC defense. Schneider was quite emotional after the goal,
“It was pretty clear to me that he plowed me over, but it is what it is.” Freshmen Chad Costello netted his 5th of the year with the assist going to Mike Morris who made a nice cross-ice pass to feed Costello.
BC came out strong in the third and Brian Boyle quickly scored BC’s second power-play goal of the night. Boyle took a slap-shot from the point that just went over the left leg pad of Northeastern tender Brad Thieseen. Carl Sneep and Anthony Aiello got assists on the goal.
Four minutes later Benn Ferriero came streaking down the boards and placed a shot right over the glove of Thieseen giving BC the lead. Joe Rooney and Tim Kunes got assists. Northeastern continued to keep the shots on but chance after chance was turned away or just but a bit wide.
BC head coach Jerry York said, “I loved how we came back, and saw and lot of resolve in the whole team”.
With 10 seconds left the BC defense iced the puck. That gave Northeastern one shot to tie the game.
Mike Morris described it best, “[Rob] Rassey took the draw, got it back to Chad [Costello], Chad did a great job, he was patient and just kind of lobbed it through, and the rebound was just sitting there and I took a whack at it, and it went right underneath Schneider.”
As the Northeastern faithful went nuts the team seemed to feed of that energy for the overtime.
“[The crowd] was awesome, that was crazy, tons of energy in here.” Morris said. Jerry York agreed, “Great atmosphere to play, big crowd, a lot of enthusiasm was generated.”
The overtime session was back and forth with neither team taking a clear advantage except for a Brock Bradford breakaway which was turned away by Thieseen.
The game saw a total of 31 penalties called, BC went 2-9 on the power-play and NU went 0-9. BC goalie Cory Schneider made 30 saves on the night and NU freshmen Brad Thieseen made 27.
Next up for Northeastern is UNH on the 25th at Matthews Arena and BC takes on Maine on Sunday at 3:00 p.m. at Maine.
