The No. 12 Boston University men’s hockey team faced No. 6 Providence College for the second weekend in a row to complete the last leg of its home-and-home series. After last weekend’s disappointing 3-0 loss to the Friars (5-2, 2-1 Hockey East), the Terriers (3-4-1, 1-1-1 Hockey East) bounced back and emerged with a win after a two-goal night from sophomore defenseman Chad Krys.
BU head coach David Quinn emphasized how much his young team needed this win after the last weekend’s disappointing losses.
“I didn’t care how we did it, I didn’t care what the score was, I didn’t care how it looked, we needed a win tonight and we needed to feel good about ourselves,” Quinn said.
Friday night’s matchup at Agganis Arena began similarly to the previous weekend with neither team getting on the board in the opening period of the game.
Although, the Terriers drew three penalties throughout the frame that resulted in penalty kills, which BU were able to successfully fend off.
Junior forward Bobo Carpenter had an opportunity to add another shorthanded goal to his two of the 2017-18 season off a pass from junior forward Jordan Greenway, but Providence’s junior goaltender Hayden Hawkey caught the shot.
Despite being unable to net a goal, this provided a turning point for the Terriers to build momentum.
BU entered the second frame with a minute and 15 seconds remaining on their first power play of the evening. However, the Terriers were unable to capitalize on the chance and the three chances that came after it.
Quinn said that he was displeased with his team’s zero-for-four performance on the power play, but said scoring goals “can be streaky.”
“Sometimes once it starts going in, it goes in when you really don’t deserve it and sometimes when you’re having trouble scoring, when you deserve to score, you don’t and that’s the nature of the game,” Quinn said.
After being outshot 15-9 in the first period, BU came back and outshot the Friars 13-8, but were unable to find the back of the net.
Leading into the final frame, the Terriers pulled ahead in shots and ended the night with a 35-31 shot advantage.
The game remained knotted at 0-0 for two periods with BU fending off Providence’s offensive chances.
However, Quinn said he thought his team’s defense, which played very well against the University of Connecticut and the University of Denver, faltered in the first half of the matchup.
“I thought we did a good job keeping them on the perimeter for the most part,” Quinn said. “They didn’t have a lot [of shots] inside the hashmarks. I didn’t like the way we defended at all in the first half of the game, there was a lot of black jerseys wide open with a lot of space. We got fortunate and our goalie stood tall when we needed to.”
After more than 47 minutes of the contest, Krys got a feed from sophomore forward Patrick Harper to notch his first goal of the season.
Less than two minutes later Krys wove his way through two Providence defenders and got a backhanded shot past Hawkey to put the Terriers up 2-0.
Krys currently has two goals and five assists on the season.
“We’re a work in progress and we’re reeling a little bit mentally, but to be able to come up and play the way we did in the third, I feel really good for our players,” Quinn said.
For the remainder of the matchup, BU was able to hold off Providence including a late penalty from Carpenter.
Sophomore goaltender Jake Oettinger collected his fifth collegiate shutout of the season with 31 saves before the team takes on No. 15 Northeastern University tomorrow night on the Terriers’ home ice.
“It feels good. I mean I thought I’ve been playing good hockey up to this point and it’s nice to get rewarded tonight,” Oettinger said. “Honestly I could’ve let up six goals and as long as we would’ve won, that’s the only thing that really mattered tonight so it was a huge team win for us and we’ve got to look to keep it going tomorrow night.”
