Michael Ayers should have been the story of Saturday night’s game.

The junior goalie for the University of New Hampshire pitched a 3-0 shutout against a Boston University team that had put five past him only two nights previous, and carried his team to the win.

But the true story of the contest was one Conrad Hache, the game’s referee.

Perhaps he should have had a jersey sans black stripes, for he seemed to be skating for New Hampshire through the last two periods.

BU coach Jack Parker disagreed, blaming his team’s lack of discipline for the large amount of calls, but rare were the instances that BU players flew off the handle. Hache notorious in Durham as evidenced by the large amount of boos greeting his name in pre-game announcements saw all BU infractions plus some extra ones as the Terriers routinely received harsher treatment than the Wildcats.

The perfect evidence came in the second period, when all hell broke loose momentarily. Senior captain Freddy Meyer charged for the net, losing control of the puck and knocking into Ayers. Hache raised his hand, ready to call a dubious goaltender interference call, while New Hampshire blueliner Kevin Truelson decided to extract some immediate punishment for Meyer, knocking him to the ice. Truelson followed that up with a few cross checks to the head, neck and back as Meyer lay flat on the ice, not even attempting to fight back. Junior forward Frantisek Skladany entered the fray, hitting Truelson and knocking the Wildcat away from Meyer. All the players on the ice locked up, including sophomore defenseman Bryan Miller and New Hampshire forward Nathan Martz, with Martz, using his glove, punching Miller a few times, knocking the blueliner’s helmet to the ice. A five-minute delay ensued after all the players were separated while the referees sorted out the penalties.

Incredibly, Skladany was given a game-misconduct while Truelson only received a four-minute double minor, leaving the Icedogs without the player who has been their best forward over the past 10 games, not to mention their leading scorer. Ironically, Parker said he had no reason to be upset with Skladany, saying he’d want his guys to protect a teammate in that instance, no matter what.

In the end, despite dominating the game, BU had no chance. New Hampshire, which through most of the game was completely unable to mount a decent attack at even strength, scored on a 5-on-3 power play and with another power play, adding one even-strength goal through a brilliant piece of stick handling and shooting by forward Sean Collins.

It would have been interesting to see whether Ayers, who played brilliantly, especially in the first period as BU put shot after shot on net, only to be turned away, could have held the fort if BU could have put a full team on the ice.

A sweep of New Hampshire may not have been expected, but BU came into Saturday night’s game and looked like it could do it.

Only problem was, the Terriers could outskate everyone but Hache.