WALTHAM, Mass. (February 24, 2024) – Once the game went to overtime on Saturday night at Bentley Arena, things were sealed for the Sacred Heart University men's ice hockey team. The Pioneers could no longer reach second place or fall to fourth; they would finish third in Atlantic Hockey.
 
Those facts will take some of the sting out of the 2-0 shootout loss to Bentley following the 2-2 (OT) tie with the Falcons. On the other hand, the Pioneers were also fewer than eight minutes away from a second-place finish with a regulation win before the host Falcons found the tying goal. Marcus Joughin (Tecumseh, Ontario) and Brendan Dumas (North Attleboro, Mass.) scored in the contest for SHU.
 
Still, there's no shame in finishing third in any 11-team college hockey league, a fact which was not lost on the coaching staff after the game.
 
"At the end of the day, we finished third in a really hard league and got a bye in the first round," said head coach C.J. Marottolo after the game. "That's not easy to do, and I'm proud of our guys to earn that bye."
 
Needing a win in regulation to leapfrog Holy Cross and finish second, Sacred Heart (14-17-3, 14-0-2 AHA) got off on the right foot, with a pair of goals in the back half of the first period to jump to a 2-0 lead. First, the Pioneers converted on a major power play at the 12:31 mark, as Mikey Adamson (Quincy, Mass.) and John Jaworski (Grinnell, Iowa) combined to set Joughin up in the left circle. Joughin made a move around his defender and buried his eighth of the season from the faceoff dot.
 
The Pios made it 2-0 at 18:23, after an offensive-zone faceoff on the left wing. Bentley provided a gift on the play, as it turned the puck over to Dumas right on the doorstep, and the latter deposited his second goal of the campaign – and second in three games – into the back of the net from there.
 
Bentley (16-16-2, 12-12-2 AHA) would halve the lead on a power play of its own just 39 seconds into the middle frame. The initial shot on the play came from the right wing, but it was the third chance that wound up in the goal, as Kellan Hjartarson eventually jammed the puck home from the top of the crease.
 
SHU took a 2-1 lead into the third period and still held it with eight minutes to play, but then Bentley found the equalizer at the 12:09 mark, immediately off a faceoff in the left-wing circle. Nick Bochen provided the centering feed, which found Ryan Upson unattended between the hash marks, for the latter's sixth of the year.
 
"I'm obviously disappointed losing a two-goal lead and after going into the third period with a one-goal lead," added Marottolo. "Bentley really pushed, and I thought they played really well."
 
Neither team could find a goal in overtime, which put the game in the books as a 2-2 tie and sent things to the shootout. Justin Robbins (New York, N.Y.) finished with 21 saves against 23 shots in the SHU crease to earn the tie (6-7-1). Connor Hasley (10-8-1) turned aside 22 of 24 at the other end for Bentley, as both teams were held under 25 shots on the night.
 
Matt Thomson cut to his backhand and flipped a shot home to open things in the shootout for Bentley. Hasley then stymied both Kevin Lombardi (Schwenksville, Pa.) and Daniel Ebrahim (Brooklin, Ontario), which allowed Ryan Mansfield to snap home the game-winner on his forehand in the third round.
 
For Bentley, the second point for the shootout win had meaning, as it allowed the Falcons to pull even with Niagara and claim Atlantic Hockey's sixth seed via a tiebreaker. The Falcons will host last-place Robert Morris in next weekend's first-round tournament action.
 
SHU had already wrapped up a first-round bye and will open play on home ice as the third seed in a best-of-three Atlantic Hockey quarterfinal series on March 8-10. Puck drop is 7 p.m. all three nights at Martire Family Arena, against an opponent to be determined. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster.
 
"We'll wait and see who we play, and then everybody starts at zero on March 8^th," concluded Marottolo.