For the second night in a row, the Boston College men’s hockey team knocked off UMass Lowell by a 3-1 score. The Eagles won their third straight game and completed the weekend sweep thanks to some strong goaltending and a few nice goals by some of their big name players as they finished up the first half of the season on a high note. Louka Cloutier was BC’s best player early on, making some big saves on some chances from in close that Lowell was able to generate. He was a big reason that the game remained scoreless for a while before Jake Sondreal was able to open the scoring. With the two teams playing at four-on-four after some matching penalties, Ryan Conmy forced a turnover in the neutral zone and found himself on a two-on-one with Sondreal. He gave Sondreal a perfect pass to set up a breakaway, and Sondreal made no mistake, firing a quick wrist shot into the back of the net to give BC a 1-0 lead. Cloutier came up with a big save on an odd man rush from Lowell immediately after Sondreal scored before Lowell took another penalty and gave BC a chance on the man advantage late in the period. The Eagles had some good zone time to start their power play off and Lukas Gustafsson eventually took advantage of it, scoring his second goal of the season on a shot from the point that got through a ton of traffic to make it a 2-0 game after 20 minutes of play.Lowell got on the board early on in the second period, scoring at the very end of a power play after BC had killed off an abbreviated 5-on-3 and most of the five-on-four. BC had a chance to respond when they had about 30 seconds of a two man advantage of their own, but they weren’t quite able to find a goal despite some nice passing plays down low to set up some scoring chances. The two teams spent most of the following 10 minutes or so trading power play chances that came up empty before Dean Letourneau restored BC’s two-goal lead. Letourneau scored just a few seconds after a BC power play chance had expired, firing an absolute bullet of a wrist shot from the top of the circles for his third goal of the weekend to make it a 3-1 lead late in the period. The Eagles had to kill off one more penalty before the end of the period, but they were able to do so and head into the third with their two-goal advantage in tact.BC had a chance to put things away when Lowell took a five-minute major penalty about halfway through the period, but they weren’t able to stretch their lead any more. They didn’t let Lowell get any closer, however, as they easily killed off a penalty of their own late in the period and Cloutier came up with a few more timely saves in the shifts following. Lowell pulled their goalie with about three minutes left to play, but even then they weren’t able to produce much of anything and BC held on to win 3-1 for the second night in a row.This was a nice result and a nice weekend sweep to send the Eagles in to their holiday break. They’ve been playing a lot better really since the start of November and if they can get some of their impact forwards healthy in the next few weeks, it could be a fun second half of the season. For now though, they’ll be off until the 28th when they take on defending champion Western Michigan in the first game of the Kwik Holiday Trip Face-Off Tournament.