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NCAA Hockey: Jon Gillies is awesome, Providence’s Frozen Four ticket punched

Stew Milne/Providence

In which we recap the day’s events in the NCAA tournament.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — At this level of the game, they don’t really come much better at their jobs than Jon Gillies.

Yes, goaltenders can have great individual seasons that exceed what Gillies does as reliably as a metronome; but in terms of the body of work, and what has happened over the last three seasons at Providence College, few compare to the towering Calgary Flames prospect.

After Saturday’s statistically poor and frankly bizarre game — he gave up five on 29, three of which were extra-attacker goals over the final 13 minutes in a game Providence led by four — he was once again reliably boring in picking up a 23-save win against Denver. His Friars won 4-1, largely because they did what they couldn’t do for so long the night before and actually scored twice into an empty net -- and they're headed to the Frozen Four about an hour up the road in Boston.

The performance was only boring insofar as it really never felt that there was going to be too much quarter given. Gillies — a career .930 goaltender who’s posted seasons of .930, .931, and .929 and played about 90 percent of his team’s minutes from the second he arrived on campus — just takes up so much of the net and does such a good job of positioning himself against just about shot that it takes a minor miracle to sneak one by him on most nights. It also helps that Providence’s forwards and defenders basically took the middle of the ice away for nearly all of the game (willingly ceding a lot of possession time to do so).

“He’s an extremely talented goalie, and y’know what, he’s really square to pucks,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “We weren’t getting to the net and that was part of our game plan, but you’ve got to give Providence credit.  They did a great job of blocking out, not letting us get there. We were trying, it’s just they make it hard on you. And then when we did get through, Gillies is there to make the save, and he wasn’t giving up rebounds today.”

That’s the norm, though. Rebounds non-existent, openings rare. In fact, the only puck that beat him wasn’t even one he saw. And it wasn’t one of those “the goalie got screened by traffic out front” situations either. It was one of those “the puck went off the glass, bounced off the goalie’s back, and got pushed over the line on the ensuing scrum” situations. Y’know, one of those.

“That was some pretty lively glass,” Gillies said. “That had to have been, first of all, a hard shot and a big carom to be able to get all the way back over the net in the air.”

But Denver really pressed the issue throughout the game, dominating possession for the most part and, even if the Pioneers were shuffling it around the perimeter for a lot of the game — and especially in the early going — so the goal from Joey LaLeggia, a Hobey Baker finalist, didn’t really come as much of a surprise except that it was goofy. The good news for Gillies, and the Friars, was that it was the only one of consequence.

“We know how good their blueliners are at working the blue line and making offensive plays,” Gillies said. “They have probably the best defenseman in the country at doing that so that was a big point for us to try and contain him, take his time and space away, and our wingers did a great job of that.”

As for the Providence goals, both came on the power play, which has been an area of real concern. They entered the game 43rd in the nation with the man advantage (14.4 percent) but things went their way for once; Noel Acciari opened the scoring midway through the second period by sneaking a low-angle backhander through DU netminder Tanner Jaillet (20 saves).

LaLeggia leveled — also on the power play — at 7:52 of the third, and things got a little nervy again. Providence’s season has been a bit of a wringer; they opened 1-31 as Gillies struggled. Then immediately after it went through a stretch in which it allowed seven goals in nine games. Then Gillies struggled a little again but the team kept winning. Then he was fine and they also kept winning. Then they lost the team’s league quarterfinal series to UNH because they scored four goals in three games while only allowing five.

After the game there was plenty of talk about adversity, and it’s clear that this team expects a lot from all its players, but perhaps Gillies — he’s something of a man apart in terms of how interesting he is to the larger hockey media world — most of all.

“I’m proud of him because he’s matured a lot, as far as being a player,” said PC coach Nate Leaman, whose team got into the tournament on one of the slimmest mathematical margins ever, thanks in large part to getting .930 goaltending. “We’ve pushed him. It hasn’t always been a touchy-feely, coach-player relationship with Jon. There’s probably been times he wanted to cut my head off, but that’s your job to push him, to get him to that next level.

The opportunity for Providence to make the difference came when LaLeggia got himself tossed from the game for elbowing Steven McParland in the head on a brutal open-ice hit, which put Providence on a five-minute power play with just 7:31 remaining.

Unfortunately the Friars didn’t really rise to the occasion. The puck was cleared early and often to start the power play, and then the scariest moment of the game: a 2-on-1 shorthanded break.

Evan Janssen carried, the defender took the pass away, and Gillies was staring down a shot that could have ended his season. He didn’t stop it. The near post did.

“I don’t really know what happened there,” Gillies said. “I lost my angle a little bit, so when I watched the puck go by me I was really shocked at how much net he had. I got pretty fortunate.”

The puck went back the other way, and Gillies could breathe easy. So too did the rest of his team; the opportunity seemed to scare them straight. After that, the power play looked like a power play should (it helps they had four-plus minutes to sort it out) and eventually Tom Parisi scored the game-winner on a defensive breakdown thanks to a bout of inhuman patience. He held the puck for nearly five seconds in the shooting position at the point and neither the forward nor defenseman in front of him knew how to handle it. A lane opened up, and Jaillet never got over to his right. Parisi didn’t miss.

When the Pios started pressing, and eventually pulled the goalie, they got a few more opportunities. But Gillies was there to mop up any issues the team in front of him did not. As usual.

“I just told him this morning that he has to be our best player,” Leaman said. “We were walking down the hallway to breakfast together, and that’s a lot of pressure for a 20-year-old kid, but he can handle it. He’s been in big moments before, and that’s what I told him after: ‘I said you had to be our best player, and you were our best player.’”

Has been all year. Has been for three years.

Nebraska-Omaha 4, RIT 0

This probably should have been the expected result, but the way the game got there was not. RIT got hit with a five-minute major and game misconduct just 5:43 into the contest, but even playing short a forward and against superior competition, the Tigers put up 40 shots on goal in a game that was, well, even until it wasn't.

Scoreless through two periods, shots 22-19 to RIT, just about anything could have happened in the third and it wouldn't have been any kind of terrible surprise. So Omaha scoring 1:01 via Jake Randolph into the final period — even if the goal was a little iffy — was perfectly within the realm of reasonable possibility. And it was still tight for a while until the wheels came off.

The Mavericks booked flights to Boston with two more goals 1:16 apart starting at 15:36 (sandwiching a timeout to settle things down), and that was it. David Pope added the empty-netter.

Ryan Massa, as he's done all year, kept things close when they perhaps shouldn't have been. He made 40 saves in the shutout win.

Three stars

1. Ryan Massa, Nebraska-Omaha

In a desperate third period alone, he stopped 18 RIT shots and preserved the lead. This kind of performance — it only tied for his second-busiest of the year, somehow — is probably why he's up to .939 on the season.

2.  Jon Gillies, Providence

See above.

3. Tom Parisi, Providence

Above and beyond the game-winner that sent Providence to the Frozen Four for the first time since 1985, Parisi also marshaled the Friar defense that did a great job of stifling chances even if it meant conceding about 57 percent possession. You can do that, to some extent, when you have a goalie like Gillies at the back, but quality chances for Denver were few and far between largely because of the team’s in-zone discipline.

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