On Friday, after the No. 6 Boston University men’s hockey team handed No. 8/9 Providence College a 4-1 loss, BU head coach David Quinn said the latter half of the teams’ home-and-home weekend series would be the “toughest game of the season.”
He certainly wasn’t kidding.
A sluggish start and outpouring of penalties proved lethal for BU (4-1-0, 2-1-0 Hockey East) as the Terriers fell to Providence (2-3-1, 1-1-0 Hockey East) by a score of 2-1 Saturday evening at Agganis Arena for BU’s first loss of the season.
Seeking its first 5-0 start since 1991, BU’s efforts appeared lackluster in the first period, when the team recorded a season-low five shots in the frame compared to 17 shots for the Friars.
“Well, we just couldn’t overcome a horrific start, really, is what it came down to,” Quinn said. “I don’t know if anybody in this room was surprised at the start. I certainly wasn’t. I wasn’t surprised at their tenacity, at their determination. I was surprised of our lack of both of those things, but they won every loose-puck battle.”
In the third period, though, the Terriers experienced an offensive surge, surpassing Providence’s shot total with 18 Terrier shots in the frame. In all, BU recorded 38 shots on goal to the Friars’ 33.
But just one of those third-period chances got converted into a goal.
“You lose, and there’s that urgency and that determination that you are not going to be denied, and they weren’t denied in the first 20 minutes, and we were denied over and over and over again,” Quinn said. “I thought early in the second, they were still controlling the play, but I thought we slowly started to get our legs under us and win some battles and get pucks to the net and do the things to have success. Too little, too late.”
At 4:38 in the third period, junior forward Danny O’Regan scored that lone goal for the Terriers with a power-play tally from the doorstep. His goal came after a scrum in front of the Providence net, when Providence goaltender Jon Gillies fell down, and O’Regan was able to finish. Junior captain Matt Grzelcyk and freshman forward Jack Eichel added assists on the play.
The team struggled to keep five skaters on the ice at all times, recording a total of eight penalties in the contest. The most costly one came 7:52 into the first period, when freshman forward Nikolas Olsson was called for boarding.
While on that power play, Providence scored its first goal at 8:57 in the first period after forward Mark Jankowski threw a puck in from the slot following a scrum in front of the net.
The Friars scored again at the 12:18 mark of the second period, giving the Terriers their first two-goal deficit of the season. Senior Shane Luke wristed home the goal off a turnover from BU freshman defenseman Brandon Hickey.
A crucial set of penalties came midway through the third period, when the teams were each dealt penalties for hitting after the whistle at 10:34. Forty-three seconds later, in the midst of an attempt to score a second goal to tie the game, BU was whistled for having too many players on the ice.
BU had an opportunity to tie up the score with about five minutes left in the game, when freshman right wing J.J. Piccinich scooted a puck directly in front of the net from the right side. Gillies stopped the chance with his pad.
“They’re [the team is] frustrated, but I think that they understand that we’ve got to put this behind us and learn from it and get ready to play next Friday night,” Quinn said. “I was hoping that we’d win all 34, but that’s not going to happen. I’d rather learn a lesson in early November than late February or early March.
“Hopefully we learned a lesson tonight.”
Sarah covers men's hockey and other sports for The Daily Free Press, and is the chairman of Back Bay Publishing Co., Inc. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the FreeP during the Spring 2014 semester and was Sports Editor in Fall 2013. She has also written for the Boston Globe and seattlepi.com. When she's not writing, she loves baking and going to concerts. You can contact her by tweeting her at @Kirkpatrick_SJ or emailing her at sjkirkpa@bu.edu.
