He probably deserves a little bit more of the credit than he’s willing to give himself.
‘It doesn’t really mean much, except that I’ve been a round a long time, that’s all, coached too many hockey games probably,’ said Boston University hockey coach Jack Parker, who passed former Boston College coach Len Ceglarski to become the third
winningest coach in college hockey history on Saturday night with his 675th win. Former Michigan State coach Ron Mason holds the all-time record with 924 wins.
The win that put him into that third spot by his lonesome appropriately came at home, with the Terriers (20-10-2, 12-8-0 Hockey East) defeating the River Hawks of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, 2-1 (10-17-3, 3-15-2).
The night before, Parker tied Ceglarski as the Icedogs overcame an early deficit to beat Lowell, 5-3, in front of a sparse crowd at Tsongas Arena in Lowell.
Saturday’s win was yet another Sean Fields Special, as the junior goaltender who earned Hockey East Player of the Week honors for his performances in the Beanpot as well as against Lowell stopped 28 of 29 shots to earn his sixth straight victory. Fields has posted a 1.17 goals against average and a .957 save percentage in that stretch.
He got a little help from his top two defensive forwards for the game, with freshman David VanderGulik and junior Mark Mullen scoring the two goals against an impressive freshman goalie from Lowell, Dominic Smart.
The River Hawks got on the board first when the Terrier defense failed to take care of Fields in front of the net in what was basically its only lapse of the night. Lowell’s Brad King took a few whacks at the puck after a couple of Fields saves and finally pushed it through to put BU in a one-goal hole.
Forty-five seconds later, the game was knotted when VanderGulik fired a wrist shot from an impossible angle to Smart’s stick side for his seventh goal of the season. Sophomore defenseman Ryan Whitney picked up the assist on the play.
The game stayed tied until the third frame, when Mullen popped home his ninth goal of the season just after a BU power play expired when senior center Brian Collins made a great play to recover a loose puck and find the Dorchester native in prime scoring position in front of the net.
‘Collins just made a great pass, I wasn’t even ready for it,’ Mullen said. ‘It was a no-look pass. I didn’t even have my stick on the ice, it hit my skate and I just chipped it in.’
From there, the game got a little wild, with both teams having goals disallowed in tough situations.
At the 9:26 mark, it looked like junior forward Kenny Magowan had given BU a two-goal lead when he knocked a puck past Smart in a scramble up front before the mass of humanity knocked the net off its moorings. Assistant referee Frank Keough saw the play and ruled that the net was off before the puck was in. Video replay which was unavailable to the officials showed that the puck had clearly crossed the goal line before the net came loose.
Karma saved BU though, as a quick whistle resulted in what could have been the tying goal by Lowell’s Elias Godoy being called back.
Friday night’s game was just as tough for BU, as Lowell jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period and deserved that lead, flustering the Terriers with its speed and physicality.
‘I thought even though we fell behind two-to-nothing early in the first, I wasn’t really aggravated with the way we were playing,’ Parker said. ‘I thought maybe we didn’t quite have our legs but Lowell was just playing very, very well and playing hard.’
‘It’s more what they’re doing to us than us coming out flat,’ said senior John Cronin on the struggles BU has had with Lowell this season. ‘They’re more physical than we’re used to. They have a lot of big forwards and they come at us hard.’
After losing senior assistant captain John Sabo to a left shoulder injury early in the first, BU lost the first frame, as Lowell freshman Mark Pandolfo younger cousin of former BU captains Jay and Mike poked home a rebound at the 9:26 mark to put the River Hawks on top.
Godoy one-timed a shot from point-blank range to put Lowell up by two at 13:44, with Fields helpless to do anything.
The second period was a different story as BU scored twice to even things up.
The first goal came off a bad turnover from a Lowell defenseman, and ended in Magowan’s sixth goal of the season, with the lone assist going to junior forward Frantisek Skladany.
The tying goal came after BU killed off a crucial 5-on-3 Lowell advantage with Whitney and captain Freddy Meyer in the sin bin.
‘The key of the game was that two big things happened [in the second period],’ Parker said. ‘One, we killed off a [1:20] five-on-three. That was huge. Two, they turned the puck over with a bad turnover [for the goal that made it 2-1]. We didn’t have much going and all of a sudden we had a goal, and that just ignited us.’
Whitney struck for his third goal of the season on a power play with less than five minutes left in the period. After Skladany tried to find sophomore defenseman Bryan Miller down low, Miller fed it to Whitney for a perfect one-timer from the blueline and BU had new life.
Skladany stopped helping people and got his own to give BU a lead 1:54 into the third frame. He took a great pass from freshman center Brad Zancanaro and drove a picture perfect one-timer past Smart.
The River Hawks wouldn’t die, and they tied it up when forward Andrew Martin their third freshman to score shot from the slot and saw Fields make what may well have been his first mistake in weeks, as the Edmonton native got a piece of the puck but couldn’t slow it down with 12:27 left.
Cronin took care of things halfway through the period, rushing the puck up ice and scoring his third goal of the year, which was the game winner, off another Lowell turnover.
‘Their defenseman dumped it out of the zone and I anticipated it,’ Cronin said. ‘I had a head of steam and I caught the defenseman flat-footed, turned him and tried to throw it on net. The rebound came right to me. It was an open net.’
‘They capitalized on a lot of their opportunities and we were unable to do that,’ said Lowell coach and former BU assistant Blaise MacDonald.
Magowan tossed up a red line prayer and grabbed his second goal of the game with an empty net as time expired to give BU a 5-3 victory. He said it the first night, but Parker’s comments on Lowell were just as relevant after BU’s Saturday night victory.
‘There was no way we were perceiving Lowell as being anything else but a real difficult team for us to play, which they proved again tonight,’ Parker said. ‘The reason why is that they beat the hell out of us last time. We didn’t forget that. That was a long time ago, but that was an embarrassing win. That’s a hard way to put that, but that was an embarrassing win because Lowell so dominated us and we were fortunate to pull something out.
‘So we weren’t looking by Lowell. We were just playing a good team that was up for us and they played hard. They won the first period, not just on the scoreboard, but territorially, too.’
The Friday night win was especially impressive when looking at the contrasting factors of BU’s prior contest, the Beanpot final against BC on Monday.
‘There certainly wasn’t too much emotion tonight, it was kind of dead,’ Cronin said of the Tsongas crowd. ‘It’s tough playing in front of 2,000 people in such a big arena. We did everything we needed to, to get up for this game, but even so, it’s not easy after coming off such a high on Monday night.’
Parker wasn’t surprised by the difference though.
‘Hell, we could have gone anywhere and we weren’t going to get the crowd we got Monday night.’
It ended up not mattering, as BU got the same result as Monday night, and the same result it has gotten over the last six games.
A win.