Already having stripped off his uniform for the final time, Mike Pandolfo sat hunched over and glassy-eyed, staring toward the back of the interview room as a reporter in the first row directed a question his way. Maybe he was reflecting on his four-year career, or pondering the next step. Or perhaps he was searching for answers.
“I think when it came down to it, we just weren’t as good as we had to be,” the senior co-captain said. “We were prepared as good as we’re going to get, and obviously a couple things didn’t go our way. I don’t know. I don’t really know, actually. They took it to us. Maybe they won the little battles. It was another one-goal game and we couldn’t find a way to win.”
It was the fourth time in three weeks that the Boston University hockey team (25-10-7) couldn’t figure out a way to beat the University of Maine, getting bumped from the NCAA Tournament yesterday, 4-3, at the Worcester Centrum Centre.
Tied at one heading into the third period, Maine erupted for three goals on five third-period shots, taking a two-goal lead with 4:23 to play and holding off a late Terrier charge to advance to the East Regional final at the Frozen Four in St. Paul, Minn., on April 4.
They were a comeback team all season, but overcoming this disadvantage might have been beyond reasonable expectations. Faced with a familiar opponent, the Icedogs were up against one of college hockey’s most successful programs and its champion twice in the last decade. BU was shorthanded, too, still without senior defenseman Pat Aufiero because of an ankle injury, and losing freshman forward Justin Maiser early in the game when he was ejected for spearing.
BU twice rallied from behind, as it has all season, but this time it wasn’t enough for their 16th come-from-behind win of the year. Freshman center David Klema’s fifth goal of the year erased one of those deficits midway through the third period, and for a moment it looked as though the Icedogs might once again finish with a flurry and punch their ticket to the Twin Cities.
But that moment was fleeting, as Maine answered quickly. Forty seconds after Klema tied the game, Lucas Lawson undid the knot with his second goal of the game, banging a loose puck through a sea of players floundering in the crease.
With players from both teams hacking and diving in front of the net, BU goalie Sean Fields left his line to play the puck, but before he could smother it, the rubber had squirted to the edge of the left faceoff circle and to Lawson, who gathered it and fired a wrist shot past a recovering Fields and a makeshift wall of scarlet and white.
The decision to leave the crease and go after the puck might have been on Fields’ mind less than five minutes later, when freshman Colin Shields padded the Black Bears’ lead with 4:23 to go. BU was on the attack in the Maine zone when junior forward John Sabo’s pass to the point eluded his blue liners and ended up at the other end of the ice.
As the puck slid slowly toward him, Fields strayed about 15 feet out of his net, but stopped before making an aggressive move. Shields was the first one to the puck, gaining control at the top of the faceoff circles and making one move to his forehand before unleashing a wrister through Fields’ five hole.
“Yesterday I couldn’t even watch the game; I spent most of the day in bed,” said Shields, who had an adverse reaction to dental work on Friday. “Even this morning I couldn’t even eat anything before the game, just a little snack. The whole game I felt pretty weak, and along the boards I wasn’t very strong.
“[Co-captain Chris Dyment] was a little slow going back for it, and I seemed to have enough fuel in the tank to get around and get body position on him.”
The Icedogs weren’t about to roll over and play dead, however. With sophomore Mark Mullen taking Maiser’s spot alongside Klema and sophomore Steve Greeley, BU’s fourth line out-worked Maine’s defensive corps to produce a scoring chance that drew the Terriers within one. Working to keep the puck in the zone for most of his extra shift, Mullen eventually threw a backhander at Maine goalie Matt Yeats, who made the save but left the rebound for Klema, who stuffed it from the goal line along the left post, doing his part to send BU to his native Minnesota.
BU kept the pressure on from that point, including three faceoffs in the Maine zone after Fields was pulled with 51 seconds to play. The Terriers had the scenario they wanted, said Pandolfo, who took two of the critical draws down the stretch. Playing with a 6-on-5 man-advantage, the play was designed for Pandolfo to win the puck back to the point, where the defenseman could decide to put a shot on goal or to sling it to his partner across the ice.
Pandolfo won each faceoff cleanly, but much like the pass that lead to Shields’ goal, there was no one there to receive it, and the puck trickled down the ice as the precious seconds of BU’s season ticked away.
“We didn’t want to lose the faceoffs clean,” said Maine coach Tim Whitehead. “Oddly enough, we did, and they went out of their zone.”
BU made one final attempt with under two seconds to go, but a pass from the corner to the front of the net crossed the goalmouth untipped, sending Maine to face the University of New Hampshire and preventing the Terriers from advancing to their NCAA-record 21st Frozen Four appearance.
“I’m real proud of my team,” said Whitehead, who took over for late coach Shawn Walsh just before the start of the season, which Maine has dedicated to Walsh’s memory. Following yesterday’s win, captain Peter Metcalf skated with the Maine “Walsh, 01” jersey that had been hung from behind the team’s bench all season.
Said Whitehead, “If there was ever a tough time to be a senior at Maine, this was it.”
Maine advanced to yesterday’s East semifinal by beating Harvard University on Saturday, 4-3 in overtime. Playing games on back-to-back days, coupled with a practice time of 6:45 yesterday morning, and it could have been expected for the Black Bears to start out sluggishly or wilt in the third period.
But Maine jumped out quickly, taking a 1-0 lead less than four minutes into the game. With the teams playing four-on-four, the Black Bears made a partial line change with the puck in their own zone, bringing Metcalf onto the ice while the puck was being batted about in the far corner.
As the puck made its way to the far corner, however, Metcalf was skating into the zone and was unchallenged when he got to it in the corner. Spotting Robert Liscak in front of the net, Metcalf slid a pass to the slot and the junior forward made no mistake, one-timing the puck past Fields.
That shot, which Fields had no chance of stopping, was the only one to beat him in the first 40 minutes. Given a plethora of quality opportunities, the Black Bears could have easily put four or five goals on the scoreboard by the end of the first period, a frame in which Fields made three breakaway saves and several other stops on Grade-A scoring chances. The best save may have come just a minute into the game, when he robbed Todd Jackson with his skate as the Maine forward tried to deke past the BU netminder.
Yeats was impressive as well, yielding only Pandolfo’s power play goal at 7:14 of the first period. The score came as freshman defenseman Ryan Whitney carried the puck patiently through the neutral zone before hitting a streaking Brian Collins as he busted into the offensive zone. Collins dropped a pass to Pandolfo along the left boards, who carried the puck toward Yeats before planting a wrist shot inside the far post.
Forced to kill a five-minute major penalty because of Maiser’s spearing infraction, BU killed the penalty without allowing a goal, and carried the momentum into intermission despite having to refocus its game plan.
“The loss of Maiser hurt us because we wanted to match lines,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “A five-minute major for spearing and a game disqualification is a real stupid penalty.”
BU came out the aggressors in the second period, taking eight shots in the first 5:28 of the middle frame, but managing only three shots of the rest of the stanza. Similarly, Maine was able to unload only five shots the entire third period – but three of them went in.
Maine’s win ended the collegiate careers of five Terriers. Co-captains Pandolfo and Dyment, along with Aufiero, forward Jack Baker and goalie Jason Tapp, will never again don the scarlet and white, going 78-50-16 in four years and twice falling one-goal short of the Frozen Four.
“It hurts, obviously; I’m done playing hockey here,” Pandolfo said. “It was fun. We’ve had some ups, we’ve had some downs, but in the end it was real fun. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, going to BU.”
But for BU hockey, the future is bright. Parker was quick to emphasize that in Hockey East success isn’t measured “on paper,” but with a solid core returning next season, the Terriers should be expected to finish higher than fifth in the conference, where they were tabbed to finish this year.
“We have a great nucleus of guys coming back, and it looks pretty promising for BU,” Klema said.
This year, though, the finale was a classic Hockey East show remade for the national stage, and this time it was Maine who this time played the starring role, and still may enjoy a Hollywood ending.
“This was a real successful year for us, all told,” Parker said.