It took the Eagles all of 35 seconds to take the lead, taking advantage of a fortuitous bounce. Sophomore center Kevin Hayes, positioned left of the net, collected the puck off the end boards and banked it off the right leg of DeSmith.
BC was the better team in the opening period, totaling 13 shots to the Wildcats’ five.
UNH rebounded early in the second to pull into a 1-1 tie. Junior left wing Austin Block, who was skating left of BC junior goalie Parker Milner, pounced on the puck after it had caromed off the end boards and fired it into the net for his third of the season at 2:10.
The Wildcats took the lead just over three minutes later. At 5:12, sophomore left wing Nick Sorkin, who was in the right circle, threw the puck into the slot for senior right wing Stevie Moses, who beat Milner for his 18th of the year and 43d of his college career.
The Eagles responded later in the period, evening the contest on a shorthanded tally. With freshman left wing Michael Sit in the penalty box for tripping at 14:12, junior right wing Chris Kreider took advantage of an opening. He skated hard down the right side and cut into the slot before guiding a shot past DeSmith from just outside the left post at 14:24.
Junior center Scott Pavelski put the Wildcats back in the driver’s seat with 4:42 remaining in regulation. UNH, which had only one shot on net through the first 11 minutes of the third period, showed a lot of persistence on its third goal.
Senior right wing Kevin McCarey took a shot from the slot that Milner saved. He got to his own rebound and threw the puck at the net on his backhand, and Pavelski rapped it home to make it 3-2.
But BC was far from done. At 16:57, during a power play, freshman left wing Johnny Gaudreau scored from the right circle. It appeared overtime was on the agenda but Whitney made sure that didn’t happen.
The teams square off again tonight at the Whittemore Center.
UNH coach Dick Umile was thoroughly displeased with the outcome.
“We just gave it away, we gave the game away,’’ said Umile, whose team had just three shots in the third and 13 total. “We worked hard to come back and went ahead and we got a penalty called against us and then we didn’t get it deep. They came back. The last goal, we gave it away. We had a chance to win it and we gave it away.’’
BC coach Jerry York said he spoke to his team about rebounding from the disappointing losses to Maine.
“The points have been very difficult for us to attain over the last period of time so we thought going into the game that these two points were really important for our club,’’ said York. “I thought we responded well. We had a lot of good opportunities to score. We had more shots on the net tonight [34] and we created more traffic. I thought Steven Whitney’s goal was a remarkable effort by him. Pat Mullane made a good pass and Whitney just made a really good play there.’’
