The team came back to win, but an integral part of the club did not.
The Boston University hockey team beat Merrimack College, 3-2, Friday night, but victory came at a steep price for the Terriers, who in the second period lost senior defenseman Pat Aufiero for three to six weeks after he suffered a deep laceration that tore a tendon in his left ankle.
Aufiero left the ice with 14:38 to play in the middle period. The gash was stitched by trainers in the Merrimack training room before the period was over, but Aufiero did not return.
It remains to be seen how Aufiero’s injury will affect the club long-term; however, Friday night BU played well enough to win without him. Trailing 2-1 when Aufiero left the game, his undermanned cohorts on the blue line were particularly impressive the rest of the way, contributing on both ends of the ice and scoring two goals.
Senior Chris Dyment netted the goal that tied the game at two, where it would remain until a tremendous individual effort by junior Freddy Meyer gave BU the lead for good with 8:19 to play in the game.
Meyer and Aufiero have been paired on the BU blue line for most of the season, and so it was fitting that Meyer won the game with a goal very much resembling Aufiero’s tumbling tally against Boston College on Jan. 20.
Meyer took a pass from freshman forward Matt Radoslovich near his own blue line and carried the puck through the neutral zone. As head coach Jack Parker yelled for him to dump the puck in, Meyer pulled a curl-and-drag fake on one of the defensemen and continued going toward the net, splitting two more Merrimack players before unloading an off-balance shot as he fell to the ice.
The shot seemed to surprise junior goaltender Joe Exter, who didn’t square his body to the puck as Meyer charged the net. Meyer took advantage, firing a wrist shot over Exter’s left arm and into the top corner of the net.
“I was kind of falling back, and I don’t think he was expecting me to get quite so much on it as I did,” Meyer said.
Merrimack mounted an attack after pulling Exter with 1:22 to play. Its best chance came on sophomore defenseman Greg Lauze’s slap shot from the point with less than 20 seconds to play, but the shot went wide of Fields and BU was able to hang on.
“Greg got an open net, he just missed it,” said Merrimack associate head coach Mike Donahey. “The puck came loose, came back out front, [Nick] Parillo got a stick on it, just put it wide.”
The Icedogs (16-7-2, 10-5-2 Hockey East) came into the game as heavy statistical favorites, and dominated the Warriors (8-16-2, 3-11-2) for the first 13 minutes. Merrimack was back on its heels, playing very defensively and not taking many aggressive chances, but at the same time limiting BU to three shots.
Merrimack’s first offensive push of the game came shorthanded, when Parillo carried the puck down the left side. Fields pushed Parillo’s wrist shot behind the net, but the Merrimack senior got his own rebound and threw the puck to the front of the net. Junior forward Anthony Aquino was waiting there, and he quickly shifted the puck to the front of his stick and slammed it under Fields for his 18th goal of the season and 50th of his career.
The Warriors owned play for the rest of the opening stanza, a stretch that included junior Nick Torretti’s second goal of the year.
Although they were down 2-0 and had been outshot 9-3, Meyer said Parker wasn’t especially hard on his team between periods.
“They got the short-handed goal, and then after that we weren’t moving the puck at all. We were just lugging it and turning it over,” Parker said. “It was almost like, ‘You try going through them, and then I’ll try going through them.’ I just told them, hey, let’s get back to passing the puck. Don’t carry the puck over more than one line at a time. If you carry the puck over one line, look to move it.”
Parker apparently got the message across to his team. Within the first 7:25 of the second period, the game was tied.
Frantisek Skladany’s ninth goal of the year broke the ice for BU, as the sophomore forward got the rebound of a Justin Maiser one-timer that was beautifully set up by freshman David Klema. Exter stacked his pads to stone Maiser, but Skladany was all alone with the rebound, holding it patiently until he saw the empty net and roofed it over Exter.
Dyment’s sixth goal of the year – his fifth on the power play – tied the game with BU on a rare four-against-three man-advantage. Dyment beat Exter from the point with a slapper, assisted by Skladany and freshman Bryan Miller.
BU killed a pair of Merrimack power plays late in the second period, improving on its league-best penalty kill and giving Meyer the chance to be the hero.
“This is a huge two points for us,” Meyer said. “We needed this, after last week especially, losing both to UNH. All these last games coming down the stretch are key for the two points if we want to keep up in the top four in Hockey East.”
By virtue of the University of Maine’s 6-3 win over the University of New Hampshire, the Terriers and Black Bears remain tied for second place in the league.
Parker was particularly impressed with the work of all his defensemen, who will again be somewhat shorthanded Monday night when the Terriers take on BC in the Beanpot tournament.
“We weren’t even thinking about Monday night,” the coach said. “We were thinking about how big these two points were for us, and they’re huge. We’ve had a lot of come-from-behind games this year.
“I think that shows something about our poise and our stick-to-it-iveness that I really like about our team. Win or lose, coming from behind, no matter what, getting the two points was important and having a little momentum and having the two points and being 10-5-2 in the league is pretty nice. Now you take a breather and go play the Beanpot, this ‘other’ thing that we do.”
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