Hi folks...
I've been an on-and-off Hockey-L subscriber for years now, and figured
perhaps I ought to make a contribution at some point.  Here we go...

I caught my first "in person" game of the season Monday night at the
Mullins Center at UMass-Amherst (my wife and I recently moved to Amherst),
and in many ways, it was an absolutely surreal game that BC was finally
able to win (in overtime), 4-3.

The western part of Massachusetts was catching the final bits of a minor
winter storm that had turned the roads icy and treacherous, meaning that
(a) the crowd was almost non-existent - announced at 1200+, but it looked
like about 600 or so to me, with huge areas of the stands completely empty,
and (b) I was a bit late, arriving about 3 minutes into the game.
Naturally, the score was already 2-0, BC (goals from Spina and Giuliano),
and evidently UMass had already used their timeout.

The rest of the first period was full of pretty uninspired hockey - and the
silence of the almost non-existent crowd certainly didn't provide any
external energy.  Almost the entire period was played in the BC offensive
end.  BC's Tony Voce scored late to make it 3-0, BC, at the first
intermission.  BC outshot UMass by a whopping margin of 19-3 in the first
period, and it truly looked like BC would score 10 goals before the night
was over.

The second period started off as more of the same, but UMass finally ground
out a goal when Tim Turner tallied about seven minutes into the period.  At
this point, things slowly started to turn.  UMass seemed to come a bit more
alive, and its energy seemed to partly offset BC's clear skill advantage.
Still, after 2 periods, total shots were 27-7, BC.

Then UMass freshman Craig MacDonald's goal early in the 3rd period
definitely woke things up, as the UMass faithful began to sense something
good might come out of this game that had looked like such a mismatch only
a few minutes earlier.  For their part, some of the BC fans were
(literally) audibly moaning things like "but we're so much better than they
are...  Oh noooo..."  Three minutes later, Turner scored his second goal of
the night for UMass, and the place was rockin' - okay, maybe not rockin',
but it was at least alive and certainly was a real hockey game again.  Both
sides had chances the rest of the way - probably better ones for UMass
actually, but there was no further scoring in regulation, and the game went
into OT.

At this point, I should come back to my comment that the game seemed
surreal.  Part of it was the tiny crowd due to the weather, part was due to
the nature of the game itself - a BC rout turns into a potential point or
two in the standings for UMass??  And definitely part of it was the fact
that THERE WERE NO PENALTIES CALLED IN THE ENTIRE GAME.  There were any
number of "traditional" penalties by both sides - guys were taken down,
etc. - but it looked as if the officials had decided to get the heck out of
Amherst as soon as possible, and the best way to do that was to blow the
whistle as infrequently as possible.  By the 3rd period, it was comical -
you'd see something that looked like a penalty, chuckle to yourself, and
look to the ref to confirm that, indeed, this too was NOT a penalty.

Indeed, if not for the overtime, it looked like the game might end in just
slightly over 2 hours - amazing.

In any event, the strange night ended with a result that was hardly
unexpected - a BC victory.  Jeff Giuliano scored with about a minute left
in OT to rescue the Eagles, 4-3.  A fun game to attend, in a weird sort of
way.

UMass was clearly overmatched, but it's got TONS of freshman and a good
coaching staff, so there's clear hope for the future (I'm a Princeton fan
as well as a BC fan, and remember well what "Toot" Cahoon was able to do
down there for a program that had been terrible for most of the last few
decades).  Freshman goalie Warner looked good (35 saves) after what was
obviously a poor start, and the already-impressive young line of junior Tim
Turner and freshmen Craig MacDonald and Greg Mauldin (accounted for all 3
UMass goals) is almost certainly going to keep getting better.

Dan McMurrer