With about three min­utes remain­ing in reg­u­la­tion of Friday’s Hock­ey East show­down between UConn and Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, the Huskies had to regroup. After a ter­rif­ic first peri­od in which they went up 2–0, they had been out­played sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the pre­vi­ous 37 min­utes of game time and now trailed 3–2. 

“I think we had a lit­tle meet­ing right before, I think at three min­utes,” Alexan­der Payusov recalled. “We had the lit­tle TV time­out, so we just came back to the bench and said we need to calm down and just stick to our game plan and that’s what we did.” 

After that, UConn changed its approach. The team was able to get oppor­tu­ni­ties on offense, some­thing it hadn’t real­ly done since the first. 

“We start­ed to at the end of that third peri­od just throw pucks at the net and try to cre­ate some­thing,” head coach Mike Cavanaugh said. “I thought we were a lit­tle too cute and a lit­tle too perime­ter for a while and some of it was just BU was tak­ing it to us.” 

The Huskies pulled Tomas Vomac­ka from net to cre­ate a 6‑on‑5 advan­tage with about 1:20 remain­ing, and then the XL Cen­ter atmos­phere came into play. The crowd had been extreme­ly loud in the first peri­od, but the noise had turned indis­tinct as they watched UConn fall behind. Maybe it was a sense of des­per­a­tion, but as the team con­trolled the puck in BU’s zone with the man advan­tage, the noise lev­el rose again. 

“The atmos­phere, the fans were stand­ing up, and they were get­ting us going and that goes a long way,” Ben­jamin Free­man said. 

Just 20 sec­onds lat­er, Jachym Kon­de­lik put a shot on goal, which Sam Tuck­er saved, but Free­man was right there to knock in the rebound to tie the game with 56 sec­onds remaining. 

“I real­ly wasn’t even sup­posed to be there, but I’m glad I was,” Free­man said. “Kind of just tried to get into a soft spot and wait for Jachym to shoot the puck. For­tu­nate­ly, he had a great shot and it was just lay­ing there and I was for­tu­nate enough to put it home.” 

The Huskies were not done there, though. After mak­ing it through the end of the peri­od, UConn, now with all the momen­tum, came out swing­ing in over­time. After get­ting the puck into the Ter­ri­ers’ zone, Free­man once again came up huge, this time by steal­ing the puck and find­ing Payusov streak­ing toward the net. Payusov, who scored a game-win­ning goal at the XL Cen­ter in over­time against BU last sea­son, just need­ed to tap the puck in to send the home crowd into a fren­zy once again. 

“I think that’s some of the chem­istry that Sasha [Payusov] and I have cre­at­ed over the years,” Free­man said. “I just knew he was gonna be crash­ing the net, so I tried to get it through the D‑man and past the goalie, so it was great that he was there.” 

Nine­teen sec­onds. That’s all it took in over­time to net the game-win­ner and com­plete­ly snatch vic­to­ry from the jaws of defeat. Payusov said los­ing wasn’t an option. 

“I don’t think we ever had a doubt in that game,” Payusov said. “Even if we were down, we have a lot of guys that can score a goal. We nev­er thought about los­ing that game.” 

After the 1–0 over­time loss to Maine last week, Cavanaugh said the team had a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent men­tal­i­ty for this over­time period. 

“We talked about when we watched the film how we sat back in that over­time,” Cavanaugh said. “We were play­ing for the one point. We said as a team, if we get into over­time again — which we will — we’re not gonna sit back. We’re gonna learn from that.” 

They learned, and in a span of about 1:30 of game time, the Huskies went from a dif­fi­cult loss to, arguably, the biggest win of the sea­son. In the end, it was BU who instead left with a heart­break­ing defeat. 

“When you play a game and you feel like you played a good game, and you get down to the last minute and they score and then they score again, it’s kind of like your legs got pulled out from under you,” BU head coach Albie O’Connell said. “But it’s hock­ey. It hap­pens all the time. You got to play a full 60.” 

With the Hock­ey East stand­ings how they cur­rent­ly are, every point is mas­sive. By steal­ing two points away from a team ahead of them in the stand­ings, UConn went from the final play­off spot to being right in the mix for host­ing a play­off series. They fur­ther solid­i­fied that chance by com­plet­ing the sweep with a dom­i­nant 6–1 win Saturday. 

The four-point swing that result­ed from those two late goals could prove to be sea­son chang­ing for the Huskies, but Cavanaugh isn’t check­ing the Hock­ey East web­site for stand­ings every time they pick up a win. 

“Every game’s a four-point game,” Cavanaugh said. “I look at it as it’s just two points for our team. I’ve said this time and time again, I don’t look at the stand­ings. We don’t have to score­board watch. We con­trol our own destiny.” 

How­ev­er, Free­man admit­ted that this win was a lit­tle more spe­cial giv­en the circumstances. 

“You try not to look at the stand­ings, but it’s impos­si­ble not to,” Free­man said. “It’s great for our team. I think it gives us a lit­tle con­fi­dence, a lit­tle wig­gle room and we know we can play in any game so it’s exciting.” 

In just four min­utes, UConn changed the course of the game and, poten­tial­ly, the season.