PROVIDENCE — Two months ago, most Providence Bruins fans had never heard of Sean Bentivoglio. And the Thorold, Ontario native never imagined that he would be playing for the P-Bruins. Up until March 10, he was in Des Moines, Iowa, playing for the Niagara University men’s hockey team in the College Hockey America playoffs.

As the captain of the Purple Eagles, the 5-foot-10, 185-pound forward earned the CHA player of the year award by scoring 16 goals and handing out a career-high 30 assists.

Bentivoglio and his Niagara teammates, who were the regular-season champs, had high hopes of going farther in the playoffs were upset in the semifinals of the CHA tournament.

After waiting a day for a flight back to Niagara, Bentivoglio found out from an agent that he had been signed by Providence.

With no time to sulk from the disappointing loss, Bentivoglio packed his bags and headed to Providence. He has made a terrific impact and has earned significant time with Providence’s first line and on the power play.

He played in 15 regular-season games and earned 14 points (3 goals, 11 assists). In Providence’s first three games of its best-of-seven Atlantic Division semifinal series against Hartford Bentivoglio scored two goals and had an assist, but his three-game postseason points streak came to an end last night in Providence’s 5-1 victory.

Power outages

Providence and Hartford have combined to score 25 goals in this series, but nothing has been easy Providence coach Scott Gordon said.

“The amount of quality chances have been minimal by both teams,” Gordon said. “We’re probably two teams that are used to getting anywhere from 18 to 25 chances a game and giving up only 10 to 12, and we are doing the same thing to each other — giving up a lot of chances and the offensive part hasn’t been there as much as both teams are accustomed too. It has been really tight. There haven’t been a lot of mistakes and that’s usually when you get your offense.”

Providence has played terrific on the power play, limiting Hartford to one goal on 21 power-play chances, including last night’s 0-for-6 performance.

Stuart provides spark

Providence defenseman Mark Stuart made his anticipated return to the P-Bruins’ lineup last night after missing four games with a leg injury. But the P-Bruins still had eight scratches. Among them were defensemen Matt Lashoff and Nate Dempsey.

“Those guys are really close,” Gordon said. “We actually thought Lashoff was going to play tonight. We waited and we waited and finally we made a decision not to [play him].”

Stuart made an impact. He was a force on defense in the first two periods and he assisted on Petr Kalus’ early third-period goal before heading to the bench.

“He was unbelievable tonight,” Providence center Ben Walter said of Stuart. “He’s a guy that just brings a certain amount of intensity every game and it rubs off, for sure, on the rest of the guys.”

rlee@projo.com