By: Marisa Ingemi / BU News Service
Boston University was lucky to have a game before the break.
“Going into Thanksgiving with a win is huge,” said BU freshman Patrick Curry. “We definitely didn’t want to go into it with a two-game losing streak. I felt like we did a lot of good things tonight and it’s going to be good to build off when we come back and see if we can get a streak going here.”
Following a 4-0 loss to Connecticut on Saturday, that was the message that head coach David Quinn sent his team prior to a rare Tuesday night contest against Harvard.
They accomplished just that with a 5-3 victory over their crosstown rival.
“I think it talks about our resiliency for a young team to be able to stay with it mentally and win third periods,” said Quinn. “That’s a big part of having success, when there’s so much parity in college hockey and against a really good team like Harvard. We’ve been a pretty good third period team all year, and we’re going to need to be if we’re going to achieve the things we want to achieve.”
BU trailed early in the game, 1-0, before Kieffer Bellows scored to tie the game. Following a shothanded, 5-on-3 goal from the Crimson, Patrick Harper was parked in front of the goal mouth to tap it past Harvard goalie Merrick Madsen and knot the game up, 2-2.
The Terriers weren’t done there.
Dante Fabbro scored his second goal of the season to give BU a 3-2 advantage. The freshman defender, whom coach Quinn said after the game suffered from health problems at the start of the season, matched his season point total with three on the evening.
Harvard came back to tie the game just 20 seconds later, and the score remained tied, 3-3, until the third period.
That’s when Nick Roberto, moved down to the second line upon Ryan Cloonan’s return to the lineup, flung the puck across the crease and off Merrick’s stick to give BU the 4-3 lead.
That’s all the Terriers would need, but they weren’t done, as recently-promoted Curry scored his second goal of the season to nail down the 5-3 victory.
“The Patrick Currys and the Nick Robertos of the world,” said Qunn, “and guys like that, and Cloonan and [Gabriel] Chabot and the guys that don’t get a lot of attention, are key, key players for us. They stepped up for us tonight.”
