BG opened their season this weekend with a pair of hard fought games, earning a win over the RIT Tigers and settling for a tie with the Niagara Purple Eagles.

On Friday RIT opened scoring early as Dan Ringwald beat BG junior goaltender Jimmy Spratt on the power play with a shot from the slot 3:53 into the game.

The Tigers pushed their lead to two later in the period as RIT’s Brennan Sarazin stole the puck, froze Spratt with a deke and found his teammate Bobby Raymond wide open with an empty net who easily scored a shorthanded goal.

“It wasn’t the start that we wanted to get off two, but we put it behind ourselves and moved on and we had a pretty good next two and half periods,” Spratt said.

In the second BG got a power play goal of their own as senior Brandon Svendson was credited with tipping sophomore Dan Sexton’s shot past RIT’s Louis Menard. The Falcons power play success continued a little over eight minutes later when junior Kai Kantola scored on a breakaway.

“The second period we were all over them, and I think it took a couple real good shifts in the second to start off and get us going, after that we got a couple nice power play goals and we used that momentum to get us through the rest of the period and the rest of the game,” Sexton said.

Kantola put the puck in the net again later in the second as he tipped senior Tim Maxwell’s up under the cross bar for the games first even-strength goal and BG’s first lead of the night.

After Kantola’s second marker, neither team was able to score until Svendson’s empty-net goal with three seconds remaining in the game.

In the 4-2 win the Falcons out shot the Tigers 31-28 as both goalies had a strong night. Spratt was the difference maker for BG in the second period when he stopped all 15 shots he faced as BG scored three goals on the Niagara net.

Following an opening night win against RIT, BG hosted Niagara Saturday evening.

Once again BG wasn’t able to keep the puck out of their net early as Niagara’s Chris Moran scored on the power play with a wrist shot from the slot, almost a carbon copy of the goal RIT scored the night before.

BG’s James Perkin was able to tie the game three minutes later as he converted a pass from sophomore Jacob Cepis on the power play. Perkin’s shot just got through Niagara’s Juliano Pagliero’s arm and body on the short side.

Niagara regained their lead and than pushed it to two as they scored two goals in a span of 50 seconds late in the first period. Moran got the first, his second of the game, on a wrist shot that beat Spratt stick side. The second goal went to Ryan Annesly who’s shot probably hit a Falcon defender on it’s way in the net.

“We played some pretty good hockey in the first period, we took some chances but we got behind, it was very similar to last night,” said BG head coach Scott Paluch.

In the second BG junior Josh Boyd picked up his first goal of the year picking up a rebound and burying the puck before Pagliero could get back to cover the post.

It looked like RIT would skate away with the victory until late in the third when sophomore David Solway crashed the net hard picking up a rebound and tying the game at three, forcing overtime.

“Our line, me, Svendson and Sexton have been kind of hammering shots at the goalie these last two games here. It’s been kind of relentless task and I guess the rebound just popped out and hard work paid off for our line and our team,” said Solway.

In overtime neither team was able to take the lead as both goalies made big saves late in the game. First Pagliero made a sprawling pad save on Kantola with two minutes left and with 28 second left Spratt denied Niagara’s Vince Rocco on breakaway to preserve the tie.

Pagliero was the star of the night as stopped 47 of the 50 shots he faced, while his team was outshot 50 to 18 in the contest.

“Juliano Pagliero played like a senior and stole us a point on the road. You know, it’s a crazy game, I thought we should have won last night and maybe we should have lost tonight, but that’s college hockey,” said Niagara head coach Dave Burkholder.