You can’t teach an old Terrier new tricks.
With just one game remaining in the 2006-07 regular season, No. 5/6 Boston University took one step forward in a convincing 3-1 win over No. 17 Vermont at Agganis Arena Friday night, before falling back into the same funk Saturday in a 3-2 loss.
The Terriers (18-6-9, 13-5-8 Hockey East) have been painstakingly inconsistent in the less-than-friendly confines of Jack Parker Rink, and this weekend was no different.
But it didn’t start out that way. In fact, Friday night’s victory went a long way in erasing BU’s struggles on home ice.
“Tonight was a real big step in the right direction for us, because we haven’t been playing that well at home,” said senior defenseman Tom Morrow on Friday, who notched his second career goal 4:30 into the third period. “We’ve kinda been up and down – a good half a period there, and then we’d kinda fall asleep here and there. But the record definitely shows it. We’ve starting coming together, we found some lines that are clicking, things are starting to bounce our way.”
It’s funny how prophetic Friday night’s postgame reactions really were.
“I think we just need to keep being more consistent,” said senior winger Kenny Roche, who notched a goal just 1:41 into Friday’s opening frame. “We’re putting together a good effort one night and then an OK effort the next night, and coming down the stretch here, every team we play is gonna be a good team. And in the playoffs and in order to go far in this league and in this country, we’re gonna have to put together our best effort every night and we’re still not doing that.”
The offense in Friday’s contest started off quickly, when Roche emerged out of a battle in the right corner with the puck, splitting two defensemen as he found an open lane and fired a shot on net. The shot from the faceoff circle beat Catamount junior goalie Joe Fallon (12 saves Friday) and slipped five-hole inside the far post.
“I wasn’t really expecting to have that much time to get to the net,” Roche said. “They gave me the whole lane to the net. There was no one on me at all, so I just tried to get the quick shot.”
BU carried the 1-0 lead into the third frame – after a scoreless second period highlighted by a tremendous penalty kill on freshman Eric Gryba’s double minor left the Terriers down a man for four minutes – before Morrow got the eventual game-winner, with 15:30 to play in regulation.
White Line winger Boomer Ewing worked the puck to the front of crease before kicking it back to Morrow, who lifted it over Fallon and into the net.
“I give [Ewing] all the credit, because it came off right on my stick,” Morrow said. “All I had to do was put it in the open net.”
Vermont’s Mark Lutz scored his first goal of the year on the power play, with 12:17 remaining, and while the goal denied BU netminder John Curry his seventh shutout of the season, it was too little, too late. With 19 seconds to play, Chris Higgins scored an empty-netter for a 3-1 final that clinched home ice for the Terriers in the Hockey East Quarterfinals.
“It was probably the way everybody would have handicapped this game,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “It would be a low-scoring game between two of the best teams in college hockey. I thought Morrow’s goal was the biggest goal of the game and it took the pressure off – now even when Lutz scores on the power play, it’s not as if they tied it up again, and the way John was playing, I was pretty confident that we would be able to survive that last 13 minutes.”
But after being held to a season-low 15 shots Friday, the Terriers slid back into their old habits for Senior Night on Saturday, with the season series and two important points on the line.
BU came out on its heels to open the game, not able to establish control early as they had the night before. The Catamounts were firing on all cylinders, and the Terriers went back to the up-and-down play that has been BU’s one constant at home.
But the down came hard in the middle frame. For 20 minutes, the Terriers lost battle after battle, getting beat to every loose puck. And while BU snuck out of the first period unscathed, it would not escape the Catamount attack in the second.
Vermont first got on the board 4:25 in, when Jay Anctil’s pass through the crease ricocheted off the skate of Colin Vock, sending the puck past Curry (22 saves Saturday) for the goal. Less than 10 minutes later, BU found itself three in the hole, after Corey Carlson and Vock capitalized on BU errors.
“The first goal was a real lucky bounce, and after that, we lost all of our jump, guys started hanging their heads and they got the second lucky goal,” Roche said. “After that, I think we had no energy at all. They had a power play goal and we couldn’t regain ourselves after that – it took us to going to the locker room, regain[ing] our composure to realize we’re still in this game, realize we’ve been at this point before. We just have to go out and outwork them in the third period.”
The Terriers have been in a 3-0 hole twice before – on the road at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and last weekend at home against UNH, both times responding to the deficit with unanswered goals to draw 3-3 ties.
“We knew as a coaching staff – we couldn’t really talk about it with our team – but we’d seen some games recently where BU was down 3-0 and they came back,” said Vermont coach Kevin Sneddon. “They’re down 3-0, looks like the game’s over, and all of a sudden it’s a 3-3 game, so we knew what was coming.”
The Terriers came out to get two goals in the first nine minutes of the final stanza – a power-play score from Matt Gilroy and a quick slapper from senior captain Sean Sullivan that snuck past Fallon (20 saves) – but BU’s comeback luck had finally run out.
“It’s tough coming back, giving up three goals in the second period,” Sullivan said. “We only had 20 minutes to work with in the third, and if we’d played as well as we did those last 20 minutes, we’d have been fine. But we gave up some goals, they got some lucky bounces, and it’s hard to come back after that.”
And despite Hockey East-leading University of New Hampshire’s loss to Providence College, 7-1, the BU loss clinched the outright regular-season title for the Wildcats.
“We play differently at home,” Parker said. “And by differently, I mean not as intense and not as smart, playing to the crowd, playing for a goal, playing not as thorough.
“I thought we played well in the first and third period, but absolutely let the game get away from us in the second period,” he continued. “We got back in it, we got our chances . . . but in general you can’t win playing 40 minutes. You gotta play 60, and the 20 we didn’t play was not just okay, it was horrible.”