Brian Tedder, Collegian Staff

Brian Tedder, Collegian Staff

Brian Tedder, Collegian Staff

DURHAM, N.H. – Friday night, it wasn’t until the third period that New Hampshire put away the Massachusetts hockey team. The Wildcats decided not to wait as long Saturday.

UNH (25-8-3, 19-5-3 Hockey East) erupted for four second period goals on its way to a 7-2 win over the Minutemen – eliminating UMass (14-16-6, 9-13-5) from the Hockey East Tournament and ending its season.

Senior captain Matt Fornataro recorded his first-career hat trick Saturday and had four goals in the series. But it was junior winger Jerry Pollastrone who led the Wildcats with five goals in the two games and the game’s first Saturday.

UMass forward Scott Crowder received a game misconduct and five-minute major for a hit from behind at 7:01 of the first period. Fifty-seven seconds into the UNH power play, Pollastrone fired a wrister from the right face-off circle that kicked off the glove of goaltender Paul Dainton and rolled into the net.

Fornataro extended UNH’s lead 20 seconds later, taking a feed from freshman Danny Dries in the slot and lifting it over Dainton’s right shoulder.

The Minutemen succeeded in killing the final three minutes of Crowder’s major. Alex Berry cut the UNH lead to 2-1 with a power-play goal of his own. UMass worked the puck around the UNH zone well for most of the period, resulting in scoring chances on shots from the point. Freshman Mike Lecomte nearly put UMass ahead 1-0 after deflecting a Mike Kostka drive from the top of the left face-off circle over the vacant top right corner of the goal.

But it was apparent that the already-overmatched Minutemen were on their last legs with 12 minutes left in the first period.

“We got behind the 8-ball early with the two-goal deficit and the five-minute major, but never really got back into it even with [Berry’s] goal because we didn’t get the big save at the big moment,” UMass coach Don Cahoon said.

Dainton allowed four goals in just over 27 minutes of action. Cahoon removed him from the game after Dries and Fornataro scored 3:30 apart in the second period. The UMass forwards and defenseman did not perform particularly well, but Dainton’s weakness in the first period-and-a-half set the Minutemen too far back.

“UNH is too good a team, too offensively capable to not have your goaltender at 100 percent,” Cahoon said. “I’m not laying this all on Paul, but I think that was clearly the difference in the game.”

The Wildcats scored some pretty goals as a result of the nifty stickhandling that is the hallmark of the UNH program. But Dainton put his team farther and farther behind Saturday by mishandling shots he normally saves with ease.

UNH outshot UMass, 40-39, and scoring chances were essentially even for the game. For the second consecutive night, the difference came in the execution of the chances. The Wildcats did, and the Minutemen did not.

UNH goaltender Kevin Regan solidified his case for Hockey East Player of the Year with his 37 saves. The Minutemen created more passing lanes than they did in Friday’s game, but Regan’s flawless positioning allowed UMass very little open net to shoot at.

“And at the other end of the ice, you have [Kevin] Regan who’s immense,” Cahoon said. “He was making it really difficult. We had great scoring chances, and he came up big on many, many occasions.”

The Wildcat forwards exploited sloppy blue-line passes and offensive possessions by the UMass defensemen and forwards in both games of the series. Cahoon commented after Friday’s game that it had to improve and altered Saturday’s lineup accordingly.

UMass’ fourth line on Friday featured junior Jordan Virtue in the middle with wingers Marc Concannon and Scott Crowder. Virtue and Concannon sat Saturday night with Brian Keane and Shawn Saunders getting the nod in their stead.

The line typically serves UMass well, disrupting the flow of the opposition’s top line and maintaining offensive-zone possession. But Crowder’s ejection forced Cahoon to shuffle his players around, essentially nullifying the effectiveness of any grouping.

Game notes

In his final game in a UMass uniform, senior winger P.J. Fenton moved into ninth place all-time on UMass’s scoring list at 95 points with his assist on Berry’s goal