CHESTNUT HILL – The voice coming out from behind the thin cinderblock wall of the Boston University hockey locker room Saturday night was more than loud enough for everyone to hear. There was one screaming compliment for Sean Fields’ 35 saves. Another for freshman Eric Thomassian’s first collegiate goal.
But the voice did not belong to a jubilant team captain, or a pumped-up loud-mouth senior.
It belonged to usually soft-spoken head coach Jack Parker.
If that fact alone doesn’t explain how big the Terriers’ 4-2 win in Game 3 – and first-round Hockey East Tournament upset over first-seeded Boston College – was, then there are plenty more where that came from.
Coming into the weekend – a weekend salvaged at the last minute of the regular season finale by an overtime goal off the stick of sophomore Dave Van der Gulik – the Terriers had faced the Eagles four times. Not only had the ‘Dogs lost all four, but they had been outscored 15-6 and outshot 155-81.
So while the eighth-seeded Terriers were able to steal (read: downright highway robbery) Thursday night’s first game from the top-seeded Eagles, they did so only because hockey games are 60 minutes long – another five minutes might have easily turned a 3-2 win into a 4-3 loss. And when a dominant BC team tore up the Terriers for a 4-0 Game 2 victory on Friday, order seemed to be coming back to the Heights.
But that all changed on Saturday, when the Terriers (12-16-9, 6-13-5 Hockey East) absolutely stunned the Eagles (27-8-4, 17-4-3) in more ways than one. Not only did the Terriers win the game 4-2, but they made the Eagles look like the lower seed. The Terriers looked like the team coming off a dominant shutout win. The Terriers looked like the team Parker knew they could be all season, while BC looked like the team facing the end of its season with a sub-.500 record.
“I’ve gotta give my team a lot of credit after getting hammered in here [Friday] night like we did, to come back and play as thorough as we did and with as much poise as we did tonight was absolutely fabulous,” Parker said. “We were so inept [Friday] night, and so back on our heels [Friday] night – BC gave us their No. 1 game, no question about it. I think we took a lot of that out of them tonight by changing our look and giving them a completely different look than they’ve ever seen from us.”
Apparently “completely different look” has taken on new meaning as “completely different team,” because when the Terriers took the ice Saturday night, they looked nothing like the struggling crew that had been stomped on just 24 hours earlier. Not only did the ‘Dogs get on the board first on a power play goal by sophomore Brad Zancanaro, but they set the tone for the rest of the game by skating faster, hitting harder and just plain beating the Eagles in almost every aspect of the game.
“They won battles, and they won loose pucks,” said BC coach Jerry York. “Their initial start to the game was something that we wanted to create. We wanted to come out with momentum from last night and really get a good start, and we really never could do that.”
Still, the Eagles were still down by only one goal as the second period began. And just five minutes later, the Eagles had a clean slate when the nation’s leading goal scorer, senior Tony Voce, beat Fields for his 28th goal of the season to tie the game at one.
But just when BC seemed ready to apply the finishing touches to the Terriers’ season, Parker’s crew put its foot to the floor and summoned up a five-minute stretch that made the loud and proud Terrier contingent in the southwest corner of Kelley Rink silence the rather sparse BC crowd.
First, freshman Kenny Roche looped around the back of the BC net and flicked a shot into the crease. The fluttering puck fooled BC goalie Matti Kaltiainen, who reached out with his glove only to see the puck float over his head before deflecting off his right pad and into the net.
Just 85 seconds later, senior Mark Mullen and junior Bryan Miller cruised into the BC zone on a two-on-one. Miller faked a pass to Mullen before firing a wrister between Kaltiainen’s legs to give the Terriers a 3-1 lead.
Then, not more than three minutes later, came a series of events that changed the game, at least according to Parker and York. Still down 3-1, BC defenseman Brett Peterson skated through the circle and fired a backhander over Fields’ left shoulder. But instead of finding the twine to cut the BU lead to one, the puck clanged off the crossbar and wound up behind the BU net.
Seconds later, BU senior Steve Greeley feathered a perfect pass into the slot in front of the BC net to a waiting Thomassian. The freshman, who has jumped in and out of the lineup this season, found Finnish five-hole again, beating Kaltiainen to put BU up 4-1.
While Parker did mention the sequence as a key moment in the game, his nominee for the game’s biggest turning point came much earlier in the evening.
“It was obvious eight minutes through the first period that we were not uptight. That to me was the turning point in the game. As long as we were not uptight, I thought we had a chance to beat this team,” Parker said.
While the upset marked only the second time an eight seed has defeated a one seed since the conference moved to the best-of-three format in 1996 (No. 1 BU lost in three games to Merrimack College in 1998), it does not mark the end of the challenge for the Terriers.
BU will now face off with second-seeded University of Maine – which swept Merrimack in two games – Friday night at 5 p.m. at the FleetCenter. The other semifinal will pit the University of Massachusetts at Amherst against the University of New Hampshire at 8 p.m.
While New Hampshire and Maine are locks for at-large NCAA Tournament bids and UMass is on the proverbial “bubble,” the sub-.500 Terriers must win the conference title – and the automatic bid that goes with it – to have any shot at the NCAAs.
Freshman defenseman Sean Sullivan, who played through a separated shoulder in Saturday night’s win, said the pain was numbed slightly by a shot – albeit slim – at the NCAA Tournament.
“We’re fighting for our lives right now, and we’ll do anything to keep the season going,” Sullivan said.
And if the Terriers should fall short, at least they – and the rest of their BC-despising fan base – can take solace in the fact that their Comm. Ave. rivals will spend the next two weeks chewing on the loss and nursing their wounds.
“This is such a different emotion,” York said – in a voice somewhat more subdued than his counterpart across the rink – after Saturday’s loss. “Twenty-four hours ago – last night – we felt so good about our chances to go to the FleetCenter. And all of the sudden we get smacked in the face tonight.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow for us.”