PROVIDENCE – The women’s Hockey East Championship Tournament unquestionably saved the best for last.

Kasidy Anderson’s game-winning goal at 12:39 of overtime capped off an incredible, dramatic 3-2 victory for the Northeastern Huskies over the Boston College Eagles at Schneider Arena on Sunday afternoon to capture their second consecutive Bertagna Trophy and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament that comes with it.

The senior left winger gained possession on the right wing wall, cut towards the slot, fought off Eagles defender Kali Flanagan and beat Maddy McArthur cleanly on her backhand for the game-winner.

“I had just hopped on the ice, and I think it was (Cayla) Barnes had the puck and she mishandled it,” Anderson said. “I kind of had a step on the other defenseman, and I knew to use my size, so I stuck my left leg out to block a stick, pulled it to my backhand and went blocker side.”

The goal capped off a dramatic overtime, one in which Boston College seemed to have the game won at the seven-minute mark of the extra session; but Caitrin Lonergan’s attempt at a seemingly wide-open net was thwarted by a sprawled-out Aerin Frankel for one of the 30 saves she made en route to winning her second consecutive tournament MVP award.

“Basically, I feel like every time I’m playing an overtime period, my thoughts are to do everything I have to do to stop the puck,” Frankel said. “In that situation, I caught myself a little out of position, but I saw the puck the whole way through, so I just tried to put my body in front and it ended up working out.”

The drama of overtime, however, had little on the last 7.8 seconds of the third period.

Or was it 7.0?

Or 7.4?

Shortly after what the Huskies thought was a tournament-clinching, empty-net goal was called back because the play was offsides, an icing at the other end brought the puck back into Northeastern’s defensive zone with the game still at 2-1. However, the play was reviewed to see how much time was on the clock, and it seemed they could never get it quite right.

“There was obviously a lot of hectic things about that moment,” Eagles head coach Katie Crowley said.

“The time was wrong on the clock, and I was trying to get the ref’s attention. My notebook actually slipped out onto the ice, which was my bad. I can’t let that happen.”

Perhaps that notebook had that play Eagles used to feed the puck to Flanagan then score the equalizer with just 4.9 seconds left on the clock to ultimately send the game into overtime.

“They talked about resetting the clock to 7.8, then they reset it to 7.4, and I don’t really know what happened. I know somebody said a notebook flew onto the ice, and I don’t know why I whistle wasn’t blown,” said Huskies coach Dave Flint.

That was the kind of moment that could sink some teams, even with the lengthy intermission to recover from the unfortunate series of events as they headed into overtime. Northeastern made sure that wasn’t going to happen.

“I know Paige Capistran stepped up and said, ‘Hey, we can’t change what happened. Yeah, that goal sucks in the last couple seconds, but we need to forget about it right now and play overtime smart and we need to be all over them and take the momentum back,’” Anderson recalled.

Flint echoed those sentiments in his own comments to the players.

“I told them, ‘Hey, listen, control what we can control,’” he said. “Our effort was going to be one of the most important things we could control going into that overtime, and I said we just had to go out there, lay it all on the line and from the drop of the puck, get all over them. Seeing the start of overtime, I felt good. I felt confident that we were going to get it done.”

Mike Ashmore has 17 years of experience covering professional and college sports. You can follow him on all social media channels at @mashmore98.