Holy Toledo! (Toledo Regional Final Recap)
Quinn Hutson send the Terriers to their 3rd straight Frozen Four with a rocket into the back of the net in Overtime
The Terriers take down Cornell in a regional final for the 2nd time in 3 years to head to their 3rd straight Frozen Four.
Men’s
Cornell (3-2 W (OT))
A tight, back and forth battle between Red Hot Rivals, BU and Cornell ends with a similar result to their 2023 matchup, with the Terriers heading to the Frozen Four.
Cornell opened the scoring at 7:35 when a deflection off Ryan Walsh led to a goal after review. Just over a minute later, Matt Copponi got one back with a deflection off a Cornell defender. It was Copponi’s 6th of the season and 2nd at the Huntington Center, more than every other venue outside Agganis Arena combined.
After a scoreless 2nd, the Terriers opened the 3rd with a power play. Cole Hutson took no time to give the Scarlet and White the lead, scoring on the power play 34 seconds into the third. Including his assist on Copponi’s goal, Cole has recorded 6 points, the most by a Terrier in the first two games of an NCAA Tournament since at least 2003. The Big Red never backed down and tied things up at 14:30 with Jack O’Leary’s 8th of the season to send the game to overtime.
In overtime, Quinn Hutson rocketed the puck from just in front of the blue line through two defenders legs under Cornell goalie Ian Shane’s legs to sent the Terriers to St. Louis. Quinn is the 2nd straight Hutson to score the game winning goal for the Scarlet and White that sent them to the Frozen Four, brother Lane did so against Minnesota last season.
Jay Pandolfo improves to 10-0 in NCAA tournament regionals as a player and a coach, and will be going to his 7th straight Frozen Four as a player or a coach.
The Terriers will face Penn State in the Frozen Four, their first time facing the Nittany Lions.
Other Notes
Since 2007, BU is 4-0 vs. Cornell outside MSG and has beaten Cornell in 4 different cities in 3 different states
Devin Kaplan, Jack Page, Quinn Hutson, Ryan Greene, and Tristan Amonte join an elite group of 47 Terriers who have been to 3 straight Frozen Fours
Advanced Stats
The Terriers held xG edge (+1) for the first time in 5 games—the last time coming in the regular season finale vs. Vermont. BU made the most of their OZone Possession, leading SOG (+4) and shot attempts (+7), despite recording over a minute less of it. Cornell dominated OZone faceoffs winning 82% compared to BU’s 48%. BU did hold a substantial lead in Corsi% 53%-47% and Puck Battles 60%-40%.
Per Period xG: 1st (1.30-0.77, BU), 2nd (0.94-0.98, Cornell), 3rd (1.32-1.03, BU), OT (0.32-0.16, BU)
Jack Harvey was the Terriers’ top performer for the first time since October 26th vs. North Dakota. 3.9516 is Harvey’s second-best performance in terms of Game Score this season, behind only January 31st vs. UNH (5.3896).
BU recorded 6 high danger shots (2.06 xG) with 1 resulting in Matt Copponi’s goal and the other 5 were saved—two of which in the third had an xG of .46. Cornell recorded 4 (1.13 xG) with one resulting in a goal, 2 were saved, and 1 missed the net. Also of note, Cole Hutson’s goal had an xG of .03 i.e., it had a 3% chance of going in given the shot location and type of shot.
BU dominated xG from the time of their first goal on, never gave it up. They also did not allow a Cornell shot attempt after 1:06 into overtime.
Both Cole Eiserman and Jack Harvey recorded xG% over 80% with 11 Terriers recorded an xG% over 50%.