You might call this season the exorcism of the Terriers for the way the hockey team is chasing away its demons.

You can start with the most recent event, winning the Hockey East championship. For the past few years, the knock on the program has been that Boston University could no longer win anything that mattered. Sure, we stock pile Beanpots like those Eurotrash guys stockpile hair gel, but that’s about where it ends. Winning the Beanpot is great, but there’s a big difference between winning a tournament in February and winning one in March or April.

That all changed when Brandon Yip slipped the puck in from behind the net Saturday. For the first time since 1997, BU won something that mattered. A regular-season championship would have been nice on its own, but Saturday’s win brings back the legitimacy a program has been struggling for years to recapture.

Winning the Hockey East championship is the biggest event to happen thus far, but a number of other trends were turned around by this team in order to get there.

There’s been a lot of talk about BU’s inability to recruit in recent years. It’s almost seemed like clockwork: bring in a few guys with each class that are supposed to be special, and they either never reach their potential or they’re just a bust.

Not so this year. While the groundwork for this turnaround was laid by the current sophomore class that has seen Peter MacArthur stand out from the beginning, the current freshmen are the most recent evidence for BU’s success in recruiting. Though the crop of freshmen wasn’t nearly as heralded as the classes brought in by other schools (namely Boston College), they’ve outperformed all the others in Hockey East.

For some proof, just take a look at the Hockey East awards. Brandon Yip took home Rookie of The Year accolades. Beyond that, three freshmen will likely finish the season with 20 or more points. It might not sound overly impressive, but two years ago only two players on the entire team had more than 20 points for the season.

Which brings up another area which has seen a turnaround: BU’s ability to score. Putting the puck in the net has been a troublesome area for years. Who will ever forget that season two years ago when “snakebitten” was not just used to describe a game, but an entire season?

But times have changed on Commonwealth Avenue, with Friday’s nine-goal outburst acting as the exclamation point. This season, BU leads Hockey East in total goals and goals per game. Overall, the Terriers average 3.4 goals per game, which is almost a score per game more than the previous two seasons. BU has scored five or more goals 11 times, which is once more than the previous two seasons combined.

And while winning the Hockey East championship might have been this team’s most impressive turnaround, I don’t think it’s the biggest. That title is reserved for the team’s dominance over rival Boston College.

Since I came to BU four years ago, the hockey team has been dominated by BC. It wasn’t until last year that we got a regular-season win over the Eagles, and coming into this year we owned a 6-10 record against them in three seasons. Sure, we beat them in the Beanpot a couple times and had some success in the Hockey East Tournament against them, but the wins always seemed more fluke than anything else. Whenever we were up on them, I always felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It just never felt like we were supposed to beat BC.

And then this year happened. Now it doesn’t feel right if we’re losing to BC. We’re the team throwing 40 shots on net and forcing the Eagles’ goalie to stand on his head, not the other way around. We’ve beaten BC four times this season in games that range from blowouts to nail-biters. Finally, they’re the ones looking up at us. (That being said, I in no way, shape or form want to play BC on Saturday. I will be rooting for the University of Miami (Ohio) with everything I’ve got. We may have beaten the Eagles four times this year, but I have this terrible feeling that it’s all too good to be true. At some point, they have to start getting the bounces against us, and I’d rather not have it happen with a trip to the Frozen Four on the line.)

So far this season, the head-spinning of years past has been replaced by smiles and celebration. But the exorcism isn’t complete, a few demons still remain, but hopefully, those can be taken care of in the coming weeks.

Joe Rouse, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].