There are around 1,700 miles between Boston and Grand Forks, N.D. However, the distance will not be an issue for the Boston University men’s hockey team, as No. 15 University of North Dakota has made the trip to the East Coast in a two-game matchup of perennial national powerhouses Friday and Saturday evening.
The Terriers (5-6, 2-3 Hockey East) are coming off their first win in their last four games, as they topped the University of Connecticut 4-1 at Agganis Arena. The win was a nice change for BU, which had been outscored 15-2 over the previous three games entering last Sunday’s win.
“I like the fact that we didn’t seem to take them lightly,” BU coach David Quinn said about his team’s win over UConn. “We came ready to play, which certainly speaks to our senior leadership.”
Freshman forwards Robbie Baillargeon and Nick Roberto each scored a goal in the team’s most recent victory. The duo has been teamed up on the second line with junior winger Evan Rodrigues, and have been two of the most productive offensive players for the Terriers as of late. Quinn said they would likely see an even greater increase in ice time this weekend.
“They’ve earned it,” Quinn said. “They’ve really stepped in and made the transition look easy in a lot of ways. I like both of those lines last week. I liked a little bit more size in the middle, and Roberto seemed a little more comfortable on the wing, Baillargeon seemed more comfortable in the middle.”
Another player who has earned more ice time for the upcoming weekend has been sophomore goaltender Matt O’Connor, who will start consecutive games for the first time since Oct. 19 and 25. O’Connor made 28 saves in the Terriers’ win over the Huskies on Sunday in the process of improving his goals-against average to 3.08 and save percentage to .913 on the season.
“We’re 11 games into it and [O’Connor and sophomore goalie Sean Maguire] have had good years,” Quinn said. “I just think OC has put himself in a position where he deserves to start tomorrow night.”
North Dakota is coming off a weekend in which it split games with No. 19 University of Minnesota-Duluth, but the big story of the weekend was off the ice. An estimated 10-12 North Dakota players were hit with a flu bug earlier in the week, and there were reportedly 10 or more players absent from practice at one point. Captain Dillon Simpson, who scored four points last weekend, reportedly in the team’s win over the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Nov. 10 after getting sick on the team’s bench.
While Simpson was hot over the weekend, the focal point of North Dakota’s offense this season has been 5-foot-6 forward Rocco Grimaldi. Through the team’s first 10 games, Grimaldi leads the team with 10 points (three goals, seven assists) and has a distant lead in shots on goal with 42. That is more than double the amount of shots the North Dakota player with the second most shots on the team, which is freshman Luke Johnson (20).
The sophomore’s small stature may remind some of his former teammate with the United State World Junior team, Johnny Gaudreau. However, Grimaldi reminds Quinn of another dynamic forward from Boston College — Nathan Gerbe.
“He has a lot of similarities to Gerbe,” Quinn said. “Strong, competitive — not that Gaudreau isn’t —but he is built more along the lines that Gerbe was. He is a guy you’re going to have to be aware of every time he is on the ice and he is obviously dangerous.”
However, all three of Grimaldi’s goals have come on the power play. North Dakota has converted on 20.9 percent of the power-play opportunities it has had this season, so the Terriers will likely look to continue their recent trend of staying out of the penalty box.
Through the first six games, BU went on the penalty kill more than four times in four out of the six games it played. However, the Terriers have not allowed more than four power plays in any of the five most recent games they have played. Quinn has really focused in on punishing players who take penalties by giving them less ice time, and it seems to be working.
“The biggest thing as a coach is patience,” Quinn said. “You can’t do something for a week and think they’re going to get it. You just have to have the patience to stick with it and be consistent and eventually they’ll understand.”
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.
