NEW YORK - Paced by a three-goal spurt in a span of two minutes, 16 seconds in the first period, the Boston University men's ice hockey team posted a 6-3 victory over Cornell in front of a sold-out crowd of 18,200 on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. Six different players scored goals for the Terriers, who improve to 4-7-2 on the season. Cornell drops to an even 4-4-0 with the loss.
Freshman Joe Pereira opened the scoring at 8:50 of the first with his first career goal, then assisted on sophomore Luke Popko's tally 18 seconds later. Junior Brandon Yip scored on a breakaway at the 11:06 mark to cap the three-goal spurt.
Each team found success on the power play in the middle period, as Cornell got a goal back with the man advantage off a tally from freshman Riley Nash at 11:43 before the Terriers' reestablished a three-goal cushion with a power-play marker by senior Pete MacArthur exactly six minutes later.
BU enjoyed its largest lead of the contest at 5-1 in the second minute of the third, when freshman Colin Wilson's tip-in eluded Cornell netminder Ben Scrivens.
The Big Red attempted to get back into the contest, using a tally by junior Jared Seminoff off assists from sophomore Brendon Nash and senior co-captain Raymond Sawada to cut the score to 5-2 with 16:16 remaining in the third period.
Cornell senior co-captain Topher Scott further whittled the lead to two goals with a score off a pass from Nash with 3:06 left on the clock, but the Big Red was unable to score again in the closing minutes.
Cornell pulled its goaltender with just over a minute remaining in the game to gain the six-on-five advantage. However, a blocked shot by Cornell found its way to MacArthur, who set up classmate Bryan Ewing for an easy empty-netter to close the books on the Terriers' fourth win of the season.
The game - dubbed `Red Hot Hockey' - served as a renewal of one of the greatest rivalries in college hockey, as the two teams battled for eastern supremacy from the late `60s to the early `80s when they were both members of the Eastern Collegeiate Athletic Conference (ECAC).