Highlights

LOWELL, Mass. – The UMass Lowell ice hockey team (7-17-4, 3-11-3 Hockey East) played to a 3-3 tie against Vermont (11-12-3, 5-8-3 Hockey East) on Saturday evening, before falling short in a shootout for the second consecutive night. The team earned one point in the Hockey East standings, finishing the weekend with two total.
 
Graduate student Nick Granowicz (Macomb, Mich.), junior Owen Cole (Dunnville, Ontario) and graduate student Filip Fornåå Svensson were the goal scorers for the River Hawks. Sophomore Scout Truman led the team with two points on two assists in the matchup, as sophomore Jack Collins (Canton, N.Y.), freshman Jak Vaarwerk (Clarence, N.Y.) and senior Brehdan Engum (Burnsville, Minn.) joined him with one helper apiece.
 
Defensively, sophomore Nick Rheáume (Trois-Rivieres, Quebec) led the way with four blocked shots. Four River Hawk skaters tied with two each, while five collected one apiece. Senior Henry Welsch (Lakeville, Minn.) got the nod between the pipes for the River Hawks, making 21 saves.
 
"I liked the effort," said Head Coach Norm Bazin. "I think it was a little bit of a different game than last night in the sense that we scored first and got off to a lead, can't get that third goal for an insurance policy and they creeped back in the second period. I thought we won the first, they won the second, and the third was fairly even. More positive than negative, I was really proud of the guys and how they scrambled back and tied the game with two minutes left and obviously a shootout is a shootout. We got to get better in that department."
 
After a back-and-forth battle to begin the game, Granowicz gave the River Hawks the lead just over the halfway mark of the first period. The Michigan native collected a loose puck that Truman was able to save from escaping the zone and rushed the net, carving in front of the crease and slipping the puck past Vermont goalie Gabe Carriere to make it 1-0. Not long after, Vermont was called for a five-minute major for boarding at 12:00. The River Hawks took full advantage of the opportunity, as Cole scored his seventh goal in his last 10 games to extend the lead to two. Vaarwerk got it started, controlling the puck near the blue line, and feeding Truman in the center, before he found Cole at the goal line and delivered a crisp pass that Cole was able to gather and quickly fire to the back of the net. Welsch and the defensive unit were able to keep the puck from entering the River Hawks' net for the remainder, and the game went to the second period with a 2-0 score.  
 
The beginning of the second period saw matching minors at the 2:10 mark, but neither team was able to net one during the 4-on-4. Vermont found the scoreboard 53 seconds later with a Timofei Spitserov goal. However, the River Hawks did not let up, peppering Carriere with nine shots through the remainder of the period. The Catamounts tied it up just before the intermission at the 17:34 mark and both teams entered the locker room with the score knotted up at two.
 
The River Hawks came out firing to begin the third period, as graduate student Alex Peterson (Collegeville, Pa.) and senior Ben Meehan (Walpole, Mass.) each had early scoring chances that were just saved. At the 6:46 mark, Joel Maatta scored for Vermont to make it 3-2 with just over 13 minutes left. A prime scoring opportunity arose when Granowicz and Vaarwerk found themselves on a 2-on-1, but Carriere was able to get a stick on Granowicz's centering pass.
 
With under three minutes remaining in regulation, Fornåå Svensson tied it up, finding a loose puck and sending it through the five hole for the equalizer. Collins got the play going in the corner, fighting to win the puck, and passing to Fornåå Svensson, who then sent it back to the blue line, where Engum was waiting to send a shot towards the net. The shot ricocheted off a defender's skate right to the stick of Fornåå Svensson, who sent the game to overtime with his goal.
 
Chances were plentiful in overtime, as each team tallied five shots on goal during the five-minute, 3-on-3 period, but none found the back of the net, and the game went to a shootout for the second consecutive night. Each team scored one goal through their first three shooters, but it was Vermont that won in the sudden death rounds with a Chris Theodore goal.
 
Next up, the River Hawks will face off against Northeastern in a two-game, home-and-home series on Friday and Saturday, February 16 and 17. Game one will be at the Tsongas Center at 7:15 p.m., while Saturday's game two is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. at Matthews Arena in Boston.