If you didn’t have the sharpest of senses, you would have sworn the Boston University hockey team was playing in the national championship game before the largest crowd ever to fill the FleetCenter for a hockey game Saturday night.
If you weren’t listening closely, you might have thought the contingent of crimson-clad crazies in the southwest corner of the arena was chanting something about “BU.” There was a six-letter word written on the front of the dark jerseys that you couldn’t read from way up in the balcony, and if you were color blind, it might have been a white-on-scarlet “BOSTON.”
Oh yeah, and that team was relying on its defense and its goalie in a 1-0 game against the University of Maine – something the Terriers did twice this year.
But despite the appearance of Rhett’s face on virtually every sign at the BU-hosted Frozen Four, Jack Parker was not behind the bench but taking in Maine coach Tim Whitehead’s piteous press conference after his team’s 1-0 loss.
“Our goal was to win the national championship and we came up short tonight,” said Maine captain Todd Jackson. “It stings a lot right now.”
Instead of BU, the fans were actually chanting “DU” – which somehow stands for the University of Denver – the team that ended up on the right side of a typical 1-0 battle with Maine at the place the Terriers’ season ended (also 1-0) at the hands of the Black Bears in the Hockey East semifinals.
Maine had not lost since that game, as it was the fourth in a 10-game winning streak that was snapped Saturday. It was also the second in an eight-game string of one-goal victories for the Terriers’ Hockey East rivals.
This one was a classic – the type of game that prompts an oft-apathetic nation to start talking about college hockey. It was also the first-ever 1-0 title game, and the first shutout in the last game of the year since Tim Regan backstopped the Terriers to the 1972 title by frustrating 39 Cornell University attempts in a 4-0 win.
It had the perfect story: After the fourth-seeded Pioneers were bounced by seventh-seeded rival Colorado College in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Tournament’s opening round, underdog Denver shocked the NCAA Tournament’s top overall seed in the University of North Dakota, also 1-0. The Pioneers had upset the University of University of Minnesota at Duluth on Thursday in the Frozen Four semifinals, then had to face the No. 1 team in the nation in Maine.
And in the perfect defensive battle between two dominating defenses and two of the best goalies in the nation – Denver’s Adam Berkhoel and Maine’s Jimmy Howard – there was the perfect ending.
Up 1-0 with under two minutes to play, the Pioneers (27-12-5) took a pair of penalties to set up a last-stand 5-on-3, which turned into a 6-on-3 when Howard was pulled in favor of an extra skater.
One of the guys in the box? Gabe Gauthier, who had notched the game’s only tally in the first period on a five-hole goal Howard (19 saves) doesn’t usually give up.
“We were fortunate to get that first-period lead, and I don’t want to say sit on it, but really pick and choose what chances we wanted to go out and try to capitalize in transition on,” said Denver coach George Gwozdecky in a familiar-sounding quote (Beanpot anyone?).
The Black Bears (33-8-3) scrapped, clawed and whacked away at it, hitting posts and missing point-blank shots. The Pioneers did exactly the same in the other direction, blocking a ridiculous 27 shots in front of Berkhoel throughout the game.
Berkhoel (24 saves, tournament Most Outstanding Player) survived it all, and when the puck was finally cleared with less than 10 seconds left, the goalie threw his stick and his helmet into the air even a few seconds early.
“I don’t even remember the last 10 seconds of the game,” said Denver captain Ryan Caldwell. “I was just going nuts. I think [Berkhoel] deked me out. He didn’t want to be on the bottom of the pile. It was just amazing.”
It was an amazing feeling that the Denver program hadn’t felt since 1969 – a feeling that is the envy of the college hockey world, from Alaska-Anchorage to Alabama-Huntsville to Orono, Maine.
Denver is from the westward stretches of that world – a region with the better, deeper conference this year (the WCHA sent five teams to the NCAA Tournament to Hockey East’s three), a region that has now won three straight titles since the Eagles of Boston College last brought the trophy east in 2001.
But as Gwozdecky said in a somewhat cliché but accurate way, “Sometimes, it’s just your time.”
It says something about the parity in the sport, when the fourth-best team in a conference can be the best team in the nation. No one east of the Rockies expected Denver to win, but the Pioneers did it.
This year, the Frozen Four happened to be at the FleetCenter. It clearly was not the Terriers’ time, nor was it BC’s or New Hampshire’s or Maine’s.
But the Black Bears were close, this after being picked to finish fourth in Hockey East by the coaches. The Terriers are young next year, and to say there will be uncertainties entering the season would be a gross understatement.
But the 2005 Frozen Four is in Columbus, Ohio. And today, on April 12, the Boston University Terriers have as good a chance of it (actually) being their time as anyone else.