As the Terriers dropped off their equipment Friday at Madison Square Garden for Saturday night’s Red Hot Hockey matchup with Cornell University, they found themselves in awe of one of the world’s most famous arenas, especially without its familiar ice, replaced by the New York Knicks hardwood.
“My guys wanted to go on the court,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “The guys just wanted to go take a peek at it and I said, ‘All right guys, pack it in,’ and someone said, ‘Hey, let those guys do whatever they want. They’re the only ones who can sell this stadium out.'”
One of college hockey’s oldest rivalries brought a packed crowd of 18,200 fans and a spark the venue had been lacking lately. The energy that pervaded the stadium, awash in red, translated into a 6-3 win for the Terriers.
It was the largest crowd that any BU team has ever played for, and, as a thank you, the Terriers turned in one of their best performances of the season, playing with an urgency that was absent during the team’s 2-1 overtime loss to Harvard last Tuesday.
“I’m pretty proud of those guys,” said senior Pete MacArthur. “We’ve been preaching a lot that our team, we have to be like a family. We do everything together, we eat together, we go to class together — we’re together everyday so [you] have to play for the guy next to you. It’s an old cliche but in hockey its not one guy, it’s everyone in the locker room. If you have one guy taking the night off, you’re probably going to lose.
“Everyone realized that if you do play for the guy next to you good things can happen,” he added. “It was nice to see everybody get up, especially on a big stage like this because its pretty nerve wracking. I was pretty nervous out there.”
If MacArthur and the rest of the Terriers were nervous they certainly didn’t show it in a first period that saw them open the game with a 7-0 shot advantage before netting three goals within a 3:15 span.
And the Terriers finally showed flashes of a team that could pull itself up from the depths of a 4-7-2 start. In these Terriers, it’s been obvious that energy makes all the difference on the ice. Saturday, getting revved up was the least of their worries.
It was a coronation of old-time college hockey on the world’s grandest stage. From the ceremonial puck drop honoring legendary coaches Ned Harkness from Cornell and BU’s Jack Kelly, to the intermission acknowledgements of a few school greats (Cornell’s championship teams and three of BU’s 1980 Miracle On Ice members Dave Silk, Mike Eruzione and Jack O’Callahan) the atmosphere was, as Cornell forward Topher Scott said, “just unbelievable.”
“It was a fabulous venue to play in and a fabulous scene with all the red in the building,” Parker said. “I thought it was quite a show. We got to see how enthusiastic college hockey is in the stands as well as on the ice.”
“It’s a great thing any time you come to the most historic arena in the world,” said Cornell coach Mike Schafer. “College hockey showed its following tonight with two great institutions.”
Last Tuesday, Parker had questioned his team’s ability to get up for a game. Saturday, the Terriers showed that they could, translating the energy in the building into electricity on the ice. The only question remains is whether they can bring that intensity every night.
“It’s easy to get up when you have 18,000 people screaming and yelling . . . but that will be the trick,” MacArthur said. “No matter how many people we’re playing in front of, we’re a little bit of a young team and we need to realize that every game counts.
“You don’t know if you really need these points come the end of the year,” he added. “We have BC twice and we just had Cornell, that’s a huge three-game swing. If you come out flat for one game and you lose that one, come the end of the year when they’re trying to pick those 16 teams, you can’t get that game back.”