There are a lot of ways to classify the members of the Boston University men’s hockey Class of 2013: Best friends, leaders and even professional prospects, for some of them.
But there is one thing the seniors are not: Champions.
With a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell in Saturday’s Hockey East title game at TD Garden, BU (21-16-2, 15-10-2 Hockey East) wrapped up its fourth consecutive season without a major tournament championship.
For captain Wade Megan, Sean Escobedo, Ben Rosen and Ryan Santana — the final four of what was originally a group of seven in the fall of 2009 — it was the end of their careers donning scarlet and white, four years without a single Beanpot, Hockey East regular season crown, Hockey East tournament title or national championship.
“I didn’t think I’d be leaving BU without any trophies,” Megan said. “But the group of guys we had and the senior class this year was pretty amazing.”
The official senior class also includes fifth-year assistant captain Ryan Ruikka, who came to BU in 2008, and Jake Moscatel, who joined the team at the halfway point last season and will likely be back next year. But for the quartet that started together and ended together, Saturday’s loss, which also ended Jack Parker’s BU hockey career, served as the final dip after four years of peaks and valleys.
There was the low of the 2009-10 team that barely finished over .500 a year after winning the national championship, and the low of failing to get out of the Hockey East quarterfinals as sophomores the next year.
The Terriers looked like one of the best teams in the country at times when this group was juniors. Then they lost a pair of teammates to legal issues and had another quit on them — all in the middle of the season. The team pulled together and even managed an NCAA tournament bid.
Two members of the Class of 2013 ended their tenure at the school early for more joyous reasons — Alex Chiasson signed with the Dallas Stars in April, then Justin Courtnall signed with the Providence Bruins in August — before another valley. A task force, commissioned following the arrests of a pair of players, slapped the well-documented “culture of sexual entitlement” label on the program last fall.
For a time, the seniors’ final campaign seemed destined to be their best yet.
With a large freshman class, a miserable slump that consumed most of the second half and having two more teammates quit mid-season, the Terriers managed to finish in the top half of the conference standings.
The Terriers powered through Merrimack College in the quarterfinals, and even came from behind to beat rival Boston College in the semifinals.
But Saturday night, with a trophy on the line, BU could not come through.
“It’s something you think about. It gets brought up a lot,” Rosen said of the championship drought. “But obviously we’ve been through a lot and we’re still here, and to make it to the Garden … it’s just a testament to how strong we’ve been as a senior class and as a team in general.”
The scene on the Garden ice after the game was a familiar one — a celebration and pure bliss on one end, disappointment and hunched-over bodies at the other.
“The last two years have been pretty tough, losing classmates and things like that,” Escobedo said. “But I think it has just made us closer as a unit. Even this year a couple guys have left early, but it has just made us a tighter unit and Coach is a big part of that.”
Parker, though, gave his squad a lot of credit. He told the team in the dressing room he was “proud to be their coach this year.”
“And I mentioned that I was happy that Wade Megan was my last captain, because he was a hell of a captain,” Parker said. “I’ve been blessed with a lot of those types of guys over my career here, over 40 years here. He was a terrific captain for us.”
“This wasn’t a hugging fest or a goodbye fest. We’ll see each other,” Parker continued. “It was more like any other time you lose your last game of the season. Kids are crying in the dressing room. They wanted to win it for the seniors, they wanted to go a little longer, they wanted to get a trophy.”
But as Megan put it, “It wasn’t meant to be.”
The seniors’ lasting legacy is yet to be determined. Will they be remembered as a troubled class, marred by people’s memories of the task force? One that failed to win anything on the ice? Or simply as Parker’s last?
Only time will tell for sure, but Megan has one idea.
With glassy eyes and a stare off into the distance, Megan found something else for the seniors to hang their collective hat on: Laying a foundation for the future.
“What we did leave for this organization is we hopefully showed the freshmen and the younger guys what it means to wear the uniform and what it means to be a BU hockey player,” Megan said. “That’s very important to us. I think we did a good job of that.”
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