NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. – The No. 14 ranked UMass Lowell Hockey team earned a 3-3 tie at Merrimack on Saturday night at Lawler Rink in Hockey East play.
 
The River Hawks move to 18-10-3 overall (12-6-3 HEA), while Merrimack goes to 7-22-3 overall (4-16-2 HEA) with the loss.
 
"It was an exciting hockey game for the fans, a little too much drama for coaches, but at the same time those guys have a lot of pride, they played hard and they found a way to crawl back into it," said UMass Lowell Head Coach Norm Bazin. "We couldn't seal the win and that's unfortunate, but I liked our effort tonight and I thought we came back from the first period and had a dynamite second period, and the third period had a little bit of everything. But we couldn't sustain that same pressure we had in the second."

Chase Gresock tied the game at 3-3 with 47.1 seconds left for Merrimack on an extra-attacker tally to force the overtime session for his second goal of the contest and 11^th of the season. Gresock finished the night with three points and a game-high seven shots on goal.
 
Sophomore forward Charlie Levesque potted his fourth goal of the year off a one-timer slapshot off a feed from junior blueliner Mattias Goransson (Slottsbron, Sweden) to give the River Hawks a 3-2 lead with 7:23 to go in the game.
 
Gresock tied the game at 2-2 for the Warriors with 3:36 left in the second period.
 
Freshman defenseman Chase Blackmun (Hudson, Wis.) poked in a rebound that slid behind Merrimack goalie Craig Pantano for his fourth career goal. Blackmun finished the night with team-high six shots on goal and posted a four-point weekend (2g,2a) for UMass Lowell in the three-point weekend.
 
Junior forward Kenny Hausinger (Anchorage, Alaska) tied the game at 1-1 just a minute into the second stanza with his second shorthanded tally of the year and 10^th goal of the season for UMass Lowell.
 
Merrimack's Alex Carle opened the scoring in the game at 3:38 of the first period.
 
Senior goalie Christoffer Hernberg (Espoo, Finland) recorded 26 saves in his 14^th start of the season for the River Hawks with 14 stops in the third period and overtime. Pantano amassed 28 stops in the loss for Merrimack, which included 16 stops in the second period alone.
 
UMass Lowell outshot Merrimack, 34-29 for the game, including an 18-7 shot advantage in the middle frame. The River Hawks were a perfect 4-for-4 on the penalty kill in the road victory.
 
The River Hawks return to action on Friday, March 1^st at New Hampshire. Game time from the Whittemore Center in Durham, N.H. is 7 p.m. The game will be televised live on New England Sports Network (NESN).