Boston College Cruises Past Wisconsin On Jerry York Night

Chestnut Hill Mass. - On a night when Boston College honored its long-time head coach Jerry York for his on ice success, his 2013-2014 Eagles did what so many iterations of York's teams have done over the years.

They won.

In a battle of two top-10 teams, the No. 7 Eagles fed off a raucous home crowd at the Conte Forum, and jumped on the visitors from Wisconsin early en route to a 9-2 win.

"There's no way we're seven goals better than the Badgers, but everything we did tonight kind of turned into goals," said BC head coach Jerry York, who was honored in the pre game with a banner to mark his all-time career wins record in NCAA hockey.

"This particular night, everything was going just how you diagram it," York added. "Some of the plays we made both defensively and offensively really had me excited behind the bench."

It took them over half the first period to find the back of the net, but the Eagles finally connected when freshman Austin Cangelosi scored his first collegiate goal. On the play, Johnny Gaudreau was awarded a secondary assist, giving him his 100^th career point.

"I'm pretty honored to get the chance to be in that group of extremely talented guys that have made that mark," Gaudreau said. "It's just been a really fun three years here so far, and I'm extremely grateful that I've gotten to play with some great players over the past two, three years here so far."

Cangelosi wouldn't wait long to get back on the scoresheet. He and Hayes, who had the primary assist on the freshman's first tally of the night, broke out of the zone on a 2-on-1. Hayes held onto the puck nearly until the goal line, before sliding it across the ice and onto the stick of Cangelosi, who tapped in his second in a span of 50 seconds.

"There's never a point during the game when we want to sit back," Cangelosi said. "We want to use the whole 60 minutes, and really go at them from the get-go, and sustain it throughout the game."

Boston College continued its dominating first period. While there was some doubt on whether Gaudreau might lose his 100^th point on a scoring change, the junior put an exclamation mark on the milestone at the 13:30 mark. After stealing the puck in his own end, Gaudreau went the distance, deking Badgers' goaltender Landon Peterson and scoring on the backhand.

"We've got some very, very special players, and I thought they were all at the top of their game tonight," said York. "I thought Johnny played extremely well."

Things would not get better for Wisconsin as the night went on. The Eagles scored just 21 ticks into the second period to extend their lead to 5-0. Boston College scored seven unanswered goals before Wisconsin broke the shutout.

"We still have to kind of formulate our team; how good are we going to be? Where are we going to go with this team?" York said after the game. "I think this was the initial look at, ‘hey, this is possible that we could be a really good team.'"

Wisconsin, who entered the night ranked second in the country, was overmatched and outpaced from the start. With Conte Forum already electric after the pregame ceremonies, the Eagles fed off the energy, and

"Two of our greatest fears coming into the game was to play our first game on a small sheet against a quick team, and a team that was fired up to play for their coach," said Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves. "Our hope was to survive the first period, and we didn't."