On the surface, the Boston University men’s ice hockey team’s 3-2 loss to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Friday may not appear to be so bad.
The No. 12 Terriers outshot the Engineers, 31-13. They held RPI (2-2) scoreless on five power play opportunities. They even displayed a strong physical presence, at one point pancaking an RPI forward with a trio of checks.
“It looks like it should be, ‘Oh that was a good loss. You played pretty hard, you got a lot of shots, you had a ton of possessions,'” said BU coach Jack Parker. “But that in reality was a real bad loss.”
Emphasis on “real bad.”
Feeding off the energy that propelled it to a 3-1 win over UMass-Lowell last weekend, BU (1-1, 1-0 Hockey East) came out charging in a dominant first period. The Terriers peppered the Engineer goal with shot after shot and didn’t give their opponents a sniff of the net until BU goalie John Curry (10 saves) made his first stop 13 minutes into the game.
They were hitting, moving, shooting and passing like a team out to grind RPI into the Agganis Arena ice. Even though the score was 1-0 BU after the first period – and 2-0 less than two minutes into the second – Friday night’s game was the Terriers’ to take and mount on the wall. That is, of course, until they let it slip away.
Overly concerned with racking up points – and sacrificing defense as a result – BU let RPI claw back into the game with a bevy of odd-man rushes, two of which tied the game, and a Kevin Croxton goal six minutes into the third that helped turn a two-goal Terrier lead into a one-goal slap in the face.
In the end, BU was left with its first loss to RPI in five years and a reason to reevaluate itself early in this young season.
“I don’t think I’ve been associated with a BU team – certainly not last year that I could remember – giving up as many odd-man rushes that we gave up tonight,” Parker said. “We were giving up 3-on-2s, 2-on-1s just because we were constantly playing on the offensive side of the puck when the puck was up for grabs.
“I also thought what happened was that we got a little full of ourselves – ‘We’re playing real well. This club can’t be that good,'” Parker later added. “You don’t respect your opponent, you lose, and we certainly didn’t respect our opponent tonight. I think we were ready for them before the game started, but once we got up, we thought it was gonna be point night.”
RPI goalie Mathias Lange certainly made sure that wasn’t the case. The freshman turned aside 29 shots in total, but if you told the crowd of 6,102 that he stopped nearly 100 shots in the first 15 minutes, they probably would have believed you.
Throughout the first period, BU crashed in on Lange, flinging shots off his chest, legs and face. Senior John Laliberte, back from his one-game disqualification, finally stuffed home the Terriers’ first goal when he took a pass from co-captain Brad Zancanaro across the crease, reached around a defenseman and slid the puck past Lange with less than two minutes to play in the period.
But heading into the intermission, it felt as if BU should have been up at least four goals, especially after Laliberte got stuffed by Lange to end the first on a play similar to the one he scored on.
Freshman Brandon Yip got that one back early in the second when he checked off his defenseman, took a pass from Kenny Roche and fired a shot five-hole on Lange. It signaled his first collegiate goal and, more importantly, the last time BU looked good against RPI.
“I think there was a little let-up, especially after we got the second goal early in the second period,” Laliberte said. “We started to play a lot of offense and not enough defense. I think that was pretty obvious from the stands, from the bench.”
Alexander Valentin wristed the Engineers’ first goal past Curry five minutes later on a 3-on-2, and Kevin Broad tied it about a period later when he pulled the same maneuver on a 2-on-1. Meanwhile, the rest of the Terriers were caught up-ice, trying to make the most of the “point night” that never was.
“We’re having guys jump in the play that probably shouldn’t be jumping in the play, we have guys stepping up and leaving their positions,” Zancanaro said. “That can hurt any team, and that obviously hurt us tonight.”
Croxton completed the comeback when he slid in past Dan Spang on a 2-on-2 and back-handed a pass from Jonathan Ornelas up and over Curry for the game-winner. In the remaining 14 minutes, BU tried desperately to tie it, but a whiffed slapshot here and a misplayed pass there held the Terriers back in their battle against an RPI defense that was too poised and too tightly packed to give up the equalizer.
“They did a good job of blocking up, so we had to dump it in a lot and because of that, there’s wasn’t a lot of offensive chances other than trying to muck it up a little bit,” Parker said. “By that time, we had expended ourselves emotionally in the wrong way and we couldn’t really recover.”
Parker said he couldn’t name one BU player who played well, besides Zancanaro, the game’s third star. He couldn’t put the blame on Curry, either. But when a team picked to finish ninth in the ECAC – a conference inferior to Hockey East – is left raising its sticks in celebration, there’s little reason to find positives.
“We were up 2-0, and you can’t give up at any point and that’s what we did,” Zancanaro said. “It’s not acceptable. I don’t care what phase of the game it is. It’s just unacceptable. It shouldn’t happen. … Hopefully we learned our lesson here.”