Box Score Boxscore

BURRILLVILLE, R.I.--Senior Alan Martin led all scorers with three points as the Western New England University men's hockey team came from behind to salvage a 5-5 overtime tie with host Nichols College on Saturday at Levy Rink.

The visiting Golden Bears (10-13-1 overall, 4-8-1 ECAC Northeast) remain alive in an Eastern College Athletic Conference Northeast playoff hunt, but will need some help. Western New England (9 points, 4-8-1) needs to win its regular-season finale Tuesday at Becker College and hope that Curry College (10 points, 5-8) loses at Johnson & Wales University on the same day.

Martin found the back of the net for his second goal of the day at the 1:43 mark of the third period--just 39 seconds after Tyler Beasley staked Nichols to a 5-3 lead--to cut the deficit to one.

Four Nichols (16-6-3, 9-3-2 ECAC NE) players had two points apiece including Beasley (1g-1a), Chris Gularte (1g-1a), Kyle Shapiro (2a) and Sean Fleming (2a).

After Ray Furr was whistled for a 2-minute minor penalty for slashing that gave WNE a power-play opportunity at the 12:41 mark, Coach Greg Heffernan called a timeout to set up a play for the Golden Bears in the Bison zone. The strategy worked as WNE won the face-off and junior assistant captain Brandon Stroud got the game-tying goal, 5-5, just 6 seconds later. Senior captain Brian Prost and Martin were credited with assists on the play.

Western New England gave the ECAC Northeast leader fits on their Senior Day by taking leads of 1-0 and 3-1. Junior defenseman Michael Darrar opened the scoring for the Golden Bears with his third goal of the season on a feed from junior Andrew Cramer midway through the first period. Junior Joe Budnick gave WNE a two-lead lead just 48 seconds into the second frame with his fifth goal, unassisted.

But less than a minute later, Brett Jackson started a string of three unanswered goals as Nichols took a 4-3 lead after 40 minutes. The go-ahead goal came with controversy as the College's webcast appeared to show WNE's Dan Monahan tripped up while coming out of his zone and Fleming going the other way on a quick counter, finding Evan Jones for his first goal of the season. There was no penalty call on the Nichols trip of Monahan that led to the 2-on-1.

Beasley made it 5-3 just 1:04 into the third period on a bad angle goal.

Western New England outshot Nichols by a 44-35 margin, including in the decisive third stanza, 18-8, when the Golden Bears scored twice to force a five-minute overtime. Junior goalie Tim Carr made 30 saves for WNE. Dylan Woodring made 11 saves but gave up three goals in 20:48 of action before being chased after letting in Budnick's soft goal from the blue line. Alex Larsen finished up with 28 stops and allowed two goals.

In the extra session, Nichols put early pressure on the WNE net with four shots--three of which were stopped by Carr. The Bison had four of the period's seven shots on goal.