BOSTON — Ty Farmer poked away the puck at his own blue line and saw just open ice in front of him.
The freshman defenseman made the strong defensive play to free the puck as Boston University tried to bring it into the zone. He then accelerated onto it with his lightning-quick speed and sped past the last Terrier defender as he crossed the red line.
Farmer didn’t get fancy once the puck was on his stick and easily wristed a shot past Jake Oettinger with 2:12 left. There was plenty of chaos to follow in the final 132 seconds, but Farmer’s second goal of the game sealed a 7-5 UMass victory, Friday at Agganis Arena.
“I just kind of popped up and I saw it was a good chance to go for it,” Farmer said. “Some would say it’s risky, but I thought it was a great play. I knew what I was going to do with it, it was just a matter of if I would have time and space.”
The second-ranked Minutemen (20-5-0, 12-3-0 Hockey East) never had much time to relax despite leading from basically the faceoff. The Terriers (10-11-4, 8-6-2 HEA) tied the game on three separate occasions and kept the pressure on UMass until the final horn sounded. Boston University scored less than a minute after Farmer scored the eventual winner to bring the game back to within one.
But each time the Terriers tied the game, UMass responded with another wave of energy to retake the lead. The Minutemen scored 2:10 after BU tied the game at 1, 1:22 after the game was knotted at 3 and 5:16 after BU made it 4-4 early in the third period. The quick turnarounds amid the electrifying atmosphere was a credit to the maturity UMass showed on the bench during the game.
“We just have to keep trusting ourselves and we’ve got to stay positive on the bench,” sophomore winger John Leonard said. “Obviously we know when we play our game and we’re doing the right things, a lot of good things are happening. We just had to stay composed on the bench, and we did a good job of that and kept pushing the pressure on them and answering the bell after they scored.”
UMass also answered the bell physically in front of the net as the refs allowed the teams to be more scrappy in the dirty areas. All six of UMass’ goals on Oettinger came within the square coach Greg Carvel drew Tuesday between the faceoff dots down to the goal line. The Minutemen scored three times off rebounds and Jack Suter deflected a Marc Del Gaizo shot past Oettinger.
The only two clean goals UMass scored were Jacob Pritchard’s opening salvo 46 seconds into the game on a cross-ice feed from Leonard and Farmer’s breakaway. Still, both of those came pretty close to the goal mouth and were the result of great individual plays as well.
“That’s been our focus the last little while, and the deflection by Suter, we don’t get a lot of deflection goals so I was pretty excited about that,” Carvel said. “(Phillip) Lagunov scored on a rebound around the net. Real good signs because you can always improve and that was an area we needed to get better. We needed to win the net battles (Friday), and the guys were rewarded for it.”
Farmer’s heroics could have come earlier in the third period when his joined Bobby Trivigno on the rush and banged home the rebound to reinstall UMass with a 5-4 lead. But it was his second goal that was a truer showcase of his skillset as he turned a simple defensive play into exhilarating offense in an instant.
But his offense also overshadowed some of his defensive shortcomings, which Boston University was able to exploit at times. A missed assignment off a defensive-zone faceoff led to one of the Terriers’ goals and he took the first of the four consecutive penalties that gave BU life at the end of the first period into the beginning of the second period. Although it wasn’t a perfect game from the freshman, he was able to at least atone for some of his mistakes with his crafty offense.
“I was hard on him in the first half of the game because he was cheating to offense,” Carvel said. “One of the goals on the (defensive) zone faceoff was his responsibility, so he wasn’t an angel (Friday). He’s a very skilled offensive guy, you have to understand he’s not the best defensive player, and against good teams that gets exposed. But we recruited him for what he was able to do with the puck. He’s an excellent offensive player and that was an unbelievable burst of speed there (on the second goal).
“When I saw him on the breakaway, I was glad it was him instead of some of our forwards; he’s pretty good at putting the puck in the net.”