UConn Men’s Hockey Upsets No. 5 Boston University, 4-0

Freshman goalie Adam Huska picks up his first career shutout in the win.

By Shawn McGrath@ShawnMMcGrath Nov 19, 2016, 10:03pm EST

Adam Huska makes the pad sprawling pad save.

UConn Men’s Hockey got its second top-10 road win of the season Saturday evening in style, claiming a 4-0 victory over No. 5 Boston University at Agganis Arena in Boston.

“I thought we had a 60-minute effort tonight,” head coach Mike Cavanaugh said postgame. “I was proud.”

Adam Huska had a very strong game in net, getting 37 saves in his first career shutout.

“He was great. He made some really acrobatic saves early,” Cavanaugh said. “Then I thought he was good at controlling his rebounds, a lot of pucks hit him and stuck to him.”

The goals came off the sticks of Karl El-Mir, Kasperi Ojantakanen, David Drake, and Corey Ronan. Johnny Austin added two assists.

Both teams struggled to get going early in the game. BU held the shots advantage after the first 20 minutes, 11-5, but for much of the first 10 minutes, neither team strung any offensive attack together. Huska stopped all eleven shots, with two coming in highlight-reel fashion.

The Huskies busted ahead with two goals in the 2nd period.

UConn broke through just past the halfway point of the second stanza, at 10:04 of the second period. Charlie McAvoy was trying to fend off two Huskies before Austin poked the puck out to El-Mir on the right side. He beat Jake Oettinger stick side to give UConn the lead.

With just under six minutes remaining in the period, Brandon Hickey was sent to the gate for boarding, giving UConn a power play. The Huskies hadn’t done much with the man advantage to this point, but they were able to double their lead at the end of this one.

On the rush, Benjamin Freeman made a very good pass to Ojantakanen, who slid the puck behind a sprawling Oettinger 16:08 into the second period to put UConn ahead 2-0.

The Terriers outshot the Huskies in the second, 14-7, but Huska was again up to the task, saving all 14 shots, seven of which came from below the face-off circle.

UConn stayed motivated despite the lead to put this one away in the third.

“We talked about not sitting back and playing on our toes,” Cavanaugh said. “I thought we kept doing that all period.”

David Drake took a pass from Evan Richardson by way of Tage Thompson to make it 3-0 just 1:48 into the period before Corey Ronan made it 4-0 after forcing a turnover down low.

“Going into the third we were saying how nothing should change,” Pratt said. “We should keep playing how we had been playing and when that goal went in, nothing changed. We kept playing on our toes all the way down to the wire.”

UConn (4-4-5, 2-2-1) gets back into action Tuesday when they play No. 3 Boston College. Puck drop is at 7:05 p.m.