The No. 3/6 Boston University women’s hockey team has big goals for this season, as it looks to make another deep run into the NCAA tournament. Through the first three games of the regular season, the Terriers are already on the path to success with an undefeated 3–0 record.
BU has already answered any questions critics could have asked about the team. It defeated an elite opponent in No. 4/5 Boston College, it held onto a lead late in a game against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and it has shown scoring depth through all four forward lines.
BU coach Brian Durocher highlighted the scoring depth in particular when talking about the early success of his team.
“It might make us a little harder to match up against,” Durocher said. “You put your top line against somebody but then you’re still seeing a Kohanchuk or a Menard centering a second or third line and they are fantastic players.
“The second thing is that obviously, we don’t have to count on one line to carry the mail … it is nice to have that and it should aid us as we go forward.”
One of the reasons the team has been off to such a hot start has been the emergence of a strong freshman class. Freshmen have scored eight of the team’s 13 goals in its first three games, five of which have come off of forward Sarah Lefort’s stick.
While Lefort has not tallied an assist this season, her five goals has helped replace the hole left in the offense by former BU captain Jenn Wakefield. Durocher said he sees some similarities between Lefort and the former BU star.
“To have a big power forward who was a great player here leave and then have another one come in who has shown signs of outstanding talent is awful comforting for us,” Durocher said. “Sarah is trying to play her role, do her thing, yet I don’t see her afraid to take a chance with the puck or trying to beat someone one-on-one. I’m sure we will see that as the time goes along.”
This start is even better than last year’s start, as BU lost its third game of the season to the University of North Dakota 5–1. That was even before the Terriers suffered a barrage of injuries to key players like then-senior Jenelle Kohanchuk and then-sophomore Marie-Philip Poulin, and the Terriers still went on to win the Hockey East Championship.
To this point in the season, BU has remained relatively healthy. Junior backup goaltender Braly Hiller will miss the season due to surgery and junior starting goaltender Kerrin Sperry has a bruise on her collarbone that has forced her to keep her arm in a sling off the ice, but Sperry has not missed any playing time as a result of the injury.
Besides that, there have been no major injuries to the Terriers, who have enjoyed the luxury of a healthy lineup.
“I think it is nice to have all the people in the lineup here this year,” Durocher said. “To have all the people here and ready to go, that is the biggest plus.”
The Terriers have the toughest tests of the early part of the season coming up during the next week. First, BU will make the short trip across Boston to face No. 8 Northeastern University, who won the Beanpot title and Hockey East Regular Season Championship last season.
Following that game, the Terriers will host No. 2 Cornell University, which knocked BU out of the NCAA tournament last season in an 8–7 triple-overtime thriller. Sophomore forward Kayla Tutino said that the team has a very clear memory of its loss to Cornell last year.
“I think we are hinting to the freshmen to circle it on the calendar,” Tutino said of the upcoming Cornell match. “It is going to be a good game. We know what we have to do and we are going to carry that with us.”
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
