One game was just disappointing. The other was disappointing and embarrassing.
The Boston University hockey team dropped two home contests to hated rivals this weekend, losing, 3-2, on Friday night to Boston College and getting pasted, 7-3, by the University of Maine Saturday night.
Penalties were the story in Friday night’s contest against the visitors from Chestnut Hill. BU (5-3-2, 3-3-0 Hockey East) may have killed off eight power plays against a good power play team, but that didn’t satisfy BU Coach Jack Parker.
‘If you told me we were going to give them nine power plays one four-on-three and one five-on-three and we’d only give up one power-play goal, I’d say it was quite a good night for us as far as penalty-killing is concerned,’ Parker said. ‘As far as taking stupid penalties, as far as being really undisciplined, it was a pathetic night for us, especially the two that put us two-men down. That’s got to be addressed.
‘Other than that, it was a helluva college hockey game. The major difference was that we’re struggling to put the puck in the net. We had some real good opportunities and didn’t score.’
‘It was a prototypical BU-BC game,’ said BC Coach Jerry York. ‘There was lots of excitement in the building and lots of very, very good plays for both teams. We’re supposedly the best team in the country, and BU is right with us. If you were lucky enough to get a ticket, you saw a terrific college hockey game.’
BU came flying out of the gate, looking quite capable of beating the No. 1 team in the nation. With senior defenseman John Cronin’s first goal of the season credited to the Duxbury native despite taking what looked to be a deflection off senior assistant captain Brian Collins’ stick the fans packing Walter Brown went ballistic, only to be silenced a mere 22 seconds later when BC fourth-liner Justin Dziama put a rebound of Ned Havern’s shot past BU junior netminder Sean Fields after the Eagles rushed in two-on-one.
Defenseman Andrew Alberts gave BC a 2-1 lead when he rifled a slap shot one time to the high corner on Fields’ glove side.
The Eagles made it a two-goal cushion just a minute into the second when forward Chris Collins deked past a defenseman and passed it to Ryan Shannon who had an easy put-away.
BU bought the game to 3-2 when senior assistant captain John Sabo scored his sixth goal of the year on the power play, taking a Justin Maiser rebound and putting it past BC goalie Tim Kelleher.
Junior wing Steve Greeley had a golden chance to tie it but his quick one-time attempt in the slot off of a beautiful feed from junior center Gregg Johnson hit the post and bounced away.
It was as close as the Terriers would get, aided in no part by their seeming eagerness to spend time in the sin bin. Senior captain Freddy Meyer, who has been much more disciplined this year after being one of BU’s most penalized players through his first three seasons, committed a bad penalty deemed slashing when he hooked a BC forward’s leg in an attempt to slow him out of the zone. The Eagle flopped to the ice, and Meyer was headed to the box.
But the worst offender of the night was sophomore center Brian McConnell. A physical player who leads BU in penalty minutes while also holding the second spot in points, McConnell went to the box three times in the game with a trip every period. After McConnell’s last infraction, Parker sat him down, and McConnell’s actions drew Parker’s ire after the game.
‘Absolutely,’ Parker said when asked whether he had sat McConnell because of the penalties. ‘He’ll sit tomorrow, too, and maybe some other guys as well. That was a real bad penalty, a real selfish penalty.’
Meyer joined McConnell on the healthy scratch list for Saturday’s game against Maine, with senior defenseman Mike Bussoli and junior wing Kenny Magowan stepping back into the lineup.
It looked like Chris Drury could have stepped back into the scarlet and white, and BU still would have had its clock cleaned by Orono’s Finest.
The Black Bears jumped out to a two-goal lead just four-and-a-half minutes into the contest. Todd Jackson scored on a two-on-one break 2:36 in, and defenseman Francis Nault took a Martin Kariya pass and drove it past Fields’ upper stick side on the power play. Throughout most of the first period, Maine looked like a team who had beaten Northeastern, 8-2, the night before, and BU looked like a team that had dropped a heartbreaker to its arch rival.
Freshman forward David Vander Gulik brought some hope to the subdued Terrier fans with a beautiful goal. After receiving a cross-ice pass from fellow frosh Brad Zancanaro, Vander Gulik sent the Maine defenseman spinning out of control with a beautiful cutback, then made a move forehand, pulled it to his backhand and stuffed it under Maine goalie Jimmy Howard.
With 5:42 left, Maine restored its two-goal lead with forward Greg Moore putting another power play goal past Fields.
In the second frame, the Terriers continued their lethargic play. Kariya scored on another power play after Fields made a great save on a deflected shot.
At 12:47 of the second, Nault hit for his second goal with another slapper that beat Fields stick-side. With Maine up, 5-1, Parker pulled his junior number one after 35:39 in favor of the freshman who wears number one, Stephan Siwiec.
Redlihs wrested a beautiful shot past Howard with 1:45 left in the second frame, giving the stunned team and fans a little life going into the last period. Greeley kept the crowd alive by putting in his second of the season 1:55 into the third.
BU caught a huge break when two Black Bears committed infractions 15 seconds apart, giving BU a long five-on-three. From there it just got ugly with BU giving away possession repeatedly despite being up two men.
‘We made somewhat of a faintly competitive comeback, but it slipped away again when it’s 5-3 and a five-on-three power play for us, and we just absolutely butcher the entire minute-and-a-half,’ Parker said. ‘That, in essence, was the game.’
The Icedogs let it slip farther away after that with Jackson getting his second goal of the night, the fourth power play notch for the Black Bears, to make it 6-3.
‘Special teams won the game for them tonight,’ Parker added. ‘We’ve either tied or lost games because we’ve been inept killing penalties and/or on the power play. Tonight we had both. After going against what I think is the best power play in college hockey last night and stopping them, one-of-nine, we didn’t come close to stopping them tonight. It was a shooting gallery. Five-on-five or five-on-four, they beat us to every puck. A couple of goals were just rebound goals that were just lying there they got to the puck before our defenseman did. And when [Howard] left rebounds and he left a lot of them their defensemen got to it before we got to it.’
That problem was illustrated perfectly on Chris Heisten’s goal that made the score 7-3. After Siwiec made a brilliant save and then recovered to make another lunging save of the rebound, Heisten was there to tuck the puck home, with not a BU blueliner in sight.
‘It was aggravating to see the lack of effort tonight, the lack of determination,’ Parker said. ‘If the puck was on the side of their net, they got it, if the puck was on the side of our net, they got it. They just outworked us, out-determined us and out-skated us.’
The loss leaves BU with three in Hockey East and leaves the question open as to how good this BU team really is. After beating then-No. 1 University of New Hampshire, the Terriers were sky-high, but the two-loss weekend erases almost all of the good feelings from that victory over two weeks ago. While the effort and play was good in one game, the feeling was the same for Parker and his troops.
‘Well, that was a disappointing weekend, capped by a disappointing game,’ Parker said.
