LOWELL, Mass. - Junior co-captain Ryan Ufko buried a breakaway opportunity 2:56 into overtime to give No. 14/12 University of Massachusetts hockey a 2-1 win over UMass Lowell on Friday night at Tsongas Center. With the win, the Minutemen move to 18-10-3 overall, 11-8-2 in Hockey East, while the River Hawks fall to 8-20-4 overall and 4-14-3 in league action.
"I was really happy with our game tonight, said UMass head coach Greg Carvel, "We played a really solid 65 minutes. You know you grind and grind and finally score a goal and then they score the next shift that was a little maddening, but I was really happy with our play tonight. Our two captains, two defensemen, score our goals, which was little surprising. I'd like to see us get to the net a little bit more tomorrow night, but we came in here with a game plan and I thought the guys executed really well."
Senior Aaron Bohlinger finally broke the scoreless deadlock at the 18:24 mark in the second period sending a shot from the high slot along the ice and past Henry Welsch off a feed from juniors Lucas Mercuri and Scott Morrow.
Then just 23 seconds later, UMass Lowell came up with the equalizer. Jack Collins redirected an Isac Jonsson shot from the blue line for the tally with Ben Meehan picking up the secondary helper.
In the extra frame, O'Hara played the puck off the boards to send Ufko up the ice alone and he skated in on Welsch to net his seventh of the season and second OT winner of the year.
The Minutemen ended the night with a 28-21 shot advantage and went 0-for-4 on the power play and 2-for-2 on the penalty kill.
Goaltender Michael Hrabal registered 20 saves in the win and Welsch had 26 stops for the River Hawks.
The two teams will be back in action tomorrow, March 2, with the second game of the weekend series set for 6 p.m. at the Mullins Center.
