
BOSTON — Relapses in discipline caught up to the Boston University men’s hockey team.
The Terriers (8-6-1, 4-3-1 Hockey East) racked up 48 penalty minutes in their 4-0 loss to the University of Massachusetts (8-6-2, 2-4-2 HEA).
“We’re finding a way to continue to shoot ourselves in the foot,” BU head coach Jay Pandolfo said postgame.
Freshmen Cole Hutson and Brandon Svoboda were each sent down the tunnel with five-minute majors and game misconducts. Hutson bulldozed UMass freshman forward Daniel Jencko and got called for charging 12 minutes into the first period, and Svoboda cross-checked defenseman Kennedy O’Connor in front of BU goaltender Mathieu Caron at 15:01 in the second.
UMass got on the board early with a 2-on-1 rush. Caron made the initial save on the shot from UMass forward Michael Cameron, but the rebound was directed straight to Ryan Lautenbach, who cashed in on the wide-open net.
Already in a hole, the Terrier penalty kill held their own in the first five minute major. The kill held the Minutemen to 6 shots, and BU ran time off the clock in their own zone with some shorthanded looks.
BU started the second period strong until the call on Svoboda extinguished their momentum.
During the second five-minute kill, the defense broke down. The Terriers held up for the first minute and a half, but then Jencko, who had been checked out by a trainer after the Hutson hit in the first period, fired the puck home past Caron to double the Minutemen’s lead.
UMass defenseman Lucas Ölvestad added insurance in the final minute of the period to bring the Terriers’ deficit to three goals.
“It seemed like we got deflated a little bit there,” Pandolfo said.
BU’s issues carried into the third period. The team was called for too many men on the ice with eight minutes left to go in the game, and once again, the Minutemen made them pay. Kenny Connors ripped the puck into the top corner to seal the Terriers’ fate.
BU ended the game on a 5-on-3 with three men in the penalty box, including a freshman forward Kamil Bendarik game misconduct in the last eight seconds to add another 10 penalty minutes to the score sheet.
The score could have looked a lot different had it not been for five goalie interference calls.
Hutson’s equalizer was taken off the board in the first period after captain Shane Lachance bumped UMass goaltender Michael Hrabel. BU freshman defenseman Sascha Boumedienne’s would-be first collegiate goal suffered the same fate in the third period.
Three UMass goals were waved off for the same reason, including one late in the game on the power play.
“[The referees] just got on a roll, couldn’t stop,” UMass head coach Greg Carvel joked.
Hrabal earned the program’s first-ever shutout of BU.
The UMass goalie managed to smother any looks BU got off the rush, where BU was creating most of its best chances at getting on the scoreboard. The Terriers’ offense was strong in the first half of the game, but Hrabal prevented them from capitalizing until the Terriers started to falter in the latter stages of the game as the constant penalty kills started to catch up to them.
“You have a lot of guys getting worn down killing penalties that we rely on to create offense and it’s just not a good recipe to win hockey games,” Pandolfo said.
BU will face UMass again on Wednesday in Amherst at 7 p.m.