ORONO, Maine – Ryan Monaghan probably thought he had gotten through the worst of it Sunday after skating in front of 5,493 unruly fans at the University of Maine’s Alfond Arena.
But while exiting the arena’s front doors following the Boston University men’s ice hockey team’s 2-1 win, a group of female fans – squished inside a white SUV stuck in bumper-and-bumper traffic at the arena parking lot – felt like he needed more.
“BU sucks,” one screamed out the window at Monaghan, dressed in his scarlet jumpsuit.
Unfazed and still in stride, Monaghan calmly – and confidently – turned, held up two fingers and yelled back to the car.
“Two points,” he said, before turning his back and leaving his instigators with little to rebut.
They countered with some childish profanity, but by that time, it meant nothing. Monaghan and his Terrier teammates had seen it all in a weekend that may come to define this year’s team: the No. 6 team in the country that hadn’t lost since last season, a Maine team and its intimidating rink that had chewed up and spit out the national defending champs only weeks before. Most importantly, they faced the question of if this squad – a loser of its last two in what forward Pete MacArthur called “horrendous losses” – could turn it all around before things really started to spin out of control.
And every challenge it faced, BU turned aside like a weak wrister. With Sunday’s stunning victory at No. 2 Maine and a 4-2 win over the previously unbeaten No. 6 University of Vermont Friday, the No. 19 Terriers (3-2, 3-1 Hockey East) reestablished themselves on the national and league scene.
The defense returned to dominating fashion. John Curry looked like the goalie that carried BU much of last year and the scoring – though not in staggering amounts – was there exactly when the team needed it. “Two points” in the standings – twice – is just one of many positives BU is taking from the weekend sweep.
“It’s a huge confidence booster, not only the fact we’re getting back in the win column but these are two good teams – Vermont number six and Maine number two,” said Curry, who made 19 saves Friday and 37 huge ones Sunday. “We needed it for sure.”
Entering the weekend, the Terriers were a team in search of itself. In losses to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (3-2 at home) and UMass-Lowell (7-4 on the road) the past two weekends, BU coach Jack Parker red-flagged a number of problems: terrible back-checking, an unwarranted overconfidence and less-than-stellar play at all positions.
Yet, he and players repeatedly asserted that these glitches were “fixable,” and, quite simply, they were. Parker lauded his defensemen after both wins, including Dan Spang and Kevin Schaeffer (who were “absolutely fabulous” after the Vermont win) as well as Sean Sullivan and freshman Matt Gilroy.
Senior captain Brad Zancanaro led an efficient penalty kill and scored the game-winner on Sunday for his first score of the season – giving the Terriers their first win at Alfond Arena in five tries. MacArthur knocked home two scores Friday, for his second multi-goal game of the year to complement Eric Thomassian’s first goal of the season and freshman Brandon Yip’s third.
But above all, the story was Curry. The junior made a combined 29 saves over the two third periods, first in helping solidify the victory over the Catamounts (7-1, 1-1) and then to win it with 19 stops in the final frame against a relentless Maine attack.
“The whole team played with more energy and intensity than we played with against RPI and Lowell,” Parker said Sunday, two days after becoming the first coach to notch 300 Hockey East wins with the victory over Vermont. “Not including the [exhibition game against the U.S. Under-18 team], our last two games before Vermont, it was almost like, ‘We’re pretty good, we could play at the pace we want to play at.’
“We weren’t playing hard at that pace, so we had to pick it up and I think we did that Friday night and we certainly did that again tonight,” he continued. “That says a lot about where we want to be if we play hard.”
Against Maine (8-2, 3-1), BU matched the Black Bears’ intensity – and the taunts from its notoriously boisterous crowd – from the start. Despite going down 1-0 on Greg Moore’s rebound stuff midway through the first period, the Terriers never became overwhelmed like the University of Denver did when it dropped two at Alfond in October.
In the second, BU’s poised play paid off. Freshman Jason Lawrence took a pass from Kevin Kielt 5:35 in, slid the puck around a defenseman in the slot, maneuvered past him and wristed a bullet past goalie Matt Lundin (18 saves) for what was easily the prettiest score a BU player has had this season.
Nearly 11 minutes later, the Terriers continued their campaign of turning Alfond into The Quietest Place on Earth when John Laliberte drove through the right slot, taking the defenseman out wide before depositing the puck on net, where Zancanaro poked it past Lundin for the 2-1 lead.
“Zancanaro’s been playing like that all year,” Parker said. “I’m glad to see he got rewarded for it.”
From then on, BU was determined to sit on its lead. Rotating all four lines continuously, the Terriers spent the majority of the third in their own zone fending off the Black Bears. At one point, Maine’s Derek Damon snuck behind the defense and took a pass right in front of the crease, only to be denied after several fakes by Curry’s big right pad.
“He got back to where he was a number of games for us last year,” Parker said of Curry. “He actually started getting back in the second or third period against Vermont, and now tonight he looked to be in complete control and very poised.”
Friday, Curry displayed heroics late in the game, but not before the offense took center stage. After Thomassian stuffed home a Lawrence pass about five minutes into the game for the 1-0 lead, MacArthur took a pass from Schaeffer and one-timed a surprise slapper past goalie Joe Fallon (14 saves) for a power play score.
Vermont came back to tie it before the end of the first – the equalizer coming when Brady Leisenring’s shot from the point hit off Ryan Gunderson’s leg and caromed past Curry – but MacArthur quickly put BU back up, firing a laser past a screened Fallon on the first shift of the second period – what Parker called “a typical Peter MacArthur goal.
“It’s almost like the goalie says, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were going to shoot it. Tell me when you’re going to shoot it next time, will ya?'” Parker said of MacArthur’s shot. “We’ve seen him get a number of goals from 40 feet because the goalie wasn’t quite ready for him.”
Yip provided the insurance with about a minute until the intermission, but after simply dominating play, BU “went brain dead a few times” in the third, Parker said. A pair of too-many-men-on-the-ice penalties gave Vermont an opening, albeit one Curry quickly closed with a number of huge saves in the game’s waning moments.
“He won it for us, just like he did a lot of times last year,” MacArthur said. “It’s great to have that confidence in your goalie. It changes the whole team.”