Icedogs shocked by UMass, rebound for 3-1 win

The Boston University hockey team will leave for Troy, N.Y., later this afternoon for tomorrow night’s game with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, marking the second trip in five days the Terriers will trek at least 100 miles west. This time, though, the seats of their Crystal coach bus will be much different than those in which they sat Friday night on the way home from Amherst.

Those unsettling seats were the result of a 5-4 overtime loss to the University of Massachusetts, when the Terriers blew a 4-1 lead and allowed the Minutemen just their third win in the rivalry’s 83-year history. But thanks to a pair of third-period scores to give BU a 3-1 win at Walter Brown Arena the next night, the Icedogs can sit slightly more comfortably after ending their first three-game losing streak since February 2001.

‘I was more than pleased with our response tonight after playing pretty well for two periods and then stealing a defeat from the jaws of victory as we did last night,’ BU Coach Jack Parker said Saturday. ‘Tonight I thought we played real well from the opening faceoff.’

No. 13 BU (8-6-2, 5-4-0 Hockey East) held advantages in shots and possession early on Saturday, but thanks to Tim Turner’s second period answer to Frantisek Skladany’s score late in the first period, Massachusetts (9-6-0, 4-5-0) was still very much in contention for its school-record fifth straight victory.

‘We were playing well and we were still 1-1 after two periods,’ said sophomore center Brian McConnell. ‘We thought we had played a little better than they had. We were hoping to get up on them and take over the game a little bit.’

The Terriers got their wish just after the puck dropped on the third period. McConnell won the opening faceoff back to captain Freddy Meyer, who found David VanderGulik on the left wing. The freshman skated the puck into the offensive zone, where he was pinched along the boards before floating a weak shot toward Massachusetts goalie Gabe Winer.

It looked to be an easy stop for the Minuteman netminder, but as he bent to glove the puck, he fundamentally put his stick on the ice as extra protection. Before he could catch the sinking puck, however, his stick got in the way and the puck bounced away from him and onto McConnell’s forehand.

‘Dave VanderGulik took not really a strong shot, but the goalie kind of bobbled it a little bit and it came right to me. I didn’t get much on it either, it was kind of a broken play, but I was lucky enough it went over him and slowly went in the net,’ McConnell said of his sixth goal of the season, which gave BU a 2-1 lead just 16 seconds into the final frame.

BU added the insurance less than four minutes later, when senior defenseman Mike Bussoli made a beautiful bounce pass off the boards in front of the BU bench to set up sophomore forward David Klema for a two-on-one with junior forward Mark Mullen.

Klema, who along with Skladany was benched for Friday’s game, carried the puck all the way to the goal line on Winer’s right. Anticipating a pass across the crease, Sean Regan, the lone defenseman on the play, dropped to one knee, but by holding the puck until he was nearly behind the net, Klema forced Winer to play him. That left Mullen all alone for the tap-in out front.

Mullen’s fourth goal of the year gave the Icedogs a 3-1 lead with 16:09 to play, but a two-goal advantage was no guarantee for the Terriers, who held a 4-2 lead on Friday before committing three penalties in a four-minute span and surrendering a pair of power play goals that tied the game.

Saturday, however, was a far different story.

‘In the third period, they didn’t get one Grade A shot,’ BU Coach Jack Parker said Saturday. ‘We had a real good step as far as positional play and guys working hard. It was quite a turnaround from the third period last night.’

The reason for the quick turnaround, the coach said, was an improvement in his team’s energy and effort, the byproducts of which were physical discipline and an effective penalty kill.

‘I think we didn’t play with a sense of urgency on the power play,’ said Massachusetts Coach Don Cahoon. ‘BU pressured us extremely well, and when you’ve got one team not playing with energy and the other team pressuring you hard, that pretty well negates the man advantage.’

The most tangible change to the Terriers’ penalty kill was the work of forwards VanderGulik and Matt Radoslovich while a man down, who played as a set complimentary to the usual grinders.

‘Well it must have been tough for the announcers, anyway,’ Parker said of the change. ‘But I thought they both played well. Rado is a real smart player, and VanderGulik has played great all year; he’s one of the smartest players. He’s moved from the fourth line, to the third line, to the second line, and now he’s killing penalties on the first line, he’s on the power play. Those guys played well together. I thought all the penalty killers played well tonight, especially those two.’

Those remarks were markedly different from the comments the coach was spewing 24 hours earlier, when his team kissed away a 4-1 lead by committing a series of penalties Parker said were stupid and failing to meet the Minutemen’s intensity.

‘We started with the stuff that’s been killing us all year, with a stupid penalty at the end of the second period,’ Parker said of Gregg Johnson’s penalty late in the middle frame. Johnson was benched Saturday. ‘A roughing penalty with 10 seconds to go in the period. We took two more unbelievably stupid penalties in the third period — they scored on both power plays.

‘We disintegrated, and that’s been the story of our year so far. Inability to keep our poise, inability to play within ourselves and not get frustrated. We got beat by a much better team tonight. Not just a better team talent-wise, a better team as far as how they played, how hard they played without taking foolish penalties. I was real impressed with UMass. I was pleased for Don to have a big win here. It was nice to see a great crowd here. It’s really going to help this program out. I wasn’t looking to help this program out, but I’m happy for Don. I think you’ve got to give UMass a lot of credit. This was not that they got a couple of breaks in the third period. They dominated the game, I thought. We had some good chances early, we had the lead, but overall it was UMass. In general, we got out-attempted 2-to-1 tonight.

‘We’re in a real tailspin and playing poorly. They’re on the upswing and playing well, and that showed tonight. We carried through with some more of the stuff we’ve been doing that’s really hurt us, and they carried through, I’d imagine, with some of the things they’ve been doing that’s really helped them. They played hard, they played smart. I was really impressed with a bunch of individuals, but in general as a team they showed what effort and discipline can do, and we did not do that.

‘Hat’s off to Don Cahoon and the UMass Minutemen. And back to the drawing board for Jack Parker and the BU Terriers. We’re nowhere near a hockey team right now.’

BU built a 3-1 lead in the first period Friday, the result of an opportunistic Terrier offense that scored on each of its only three shots in the stanza.

Freshmen defensemen Dan Spang and Jekabs Redlihs, with their first and third career goals respectively, gave BU a 2-0 lead before Peter Travato narrowed the margin 12 seconds later. Bussoli got it back, however, scoring his second of the season with 5:12 to play in the first.

Meyer then made it four goals by four defensemen, ripping a low one-timer past Winer for a power play goal. With 14:20 to play in the middle frame, BU held a 4-1 lead. The team had managed just six shots, but things were going well: until it caught up to them.

‘The significance [of having four goals by defensemen] is we’re not playing hard enough and our forwards aren’t getting enough opportunities,’ Parker said. ‘As the game progressed, we let UMass fly by us. We made bad reads on the initial rush, we didn’t backcheck, and it’s as if once they made it 4-3, [we said] we’re not going to win this game easy? This isn’t going to be a 7-1 game for us? A 7-2 game?’

Massachusetts wasn’t going to go easily. Not before a crowd of 3,891 that was more than double its season average, and not with a three-game winning streak in the balance. The Minutemen cut the deficit to 4-2 on Mike Warner’s wrister from the slot.

Down by two, Cahoon knew what would happen next.

‘Coach called it in the locker room,’ according to Massachusetts sophomore Greg Mauldin. ‘He said, ‘You’ll get two in the third and then win it in overtime.”

Mauldin did his part in making Cahoon’s premonition a reality by blasting a one-timer by Fields with the Minutemen on a four-on-three power play. Less than three minutes later, Mauldin struck again, this time carrying the puck through the neutral zone and bursting toward the BU net, drawing two defenders and leaving a pass to a wide open Marvin Degon, who ripped a slapper just inside the left post to tie it, 4-4.

Degon’s was Massachusetts’ second power play score in five opportunities, and though they were given a man-up chance 1:35 later, BU couldn’t convert.

‘We have not had a power play,’ Parker said. ‘We have a man advantage, but we don’t have a power play. We haven’t had a power play all year.’

With a nationally ranked heavyweight on the ropes, the Mullins Center crowd got louder as play got more physical and time ticked away. Regulation ended evenly and without great chances for either team, while in overtime BU controlled play until Massachusetts got its only shot on net.

As Redlihs tried to rush the puck over the red line, Chris Capraro jumped him along the left wing boards. With only Fields between himself and history, the Medford native raced toward the goal, shifted quickly before the crease, and tucked the puck under Fields’ pads.

‘It’s probably the most significant regular season win [for Massachusetts], and since we haven’t been in the playoffs, it’s probably the most significant win,’ Cahoon said. ‘It’s a great win for us. The kids deserve, and have earned, tremendous respect for having resiliency to get through the game.’

By Saturday night, however, things had already changed. Cahoon rated the weekend ‘so-so’ for his team, and said it seemed BU had already learned from the previous night.

‘I thought BU responded real well, coming off the loss [Friday],’ he said. ‘They played with a little bit more energy than we did tonight. They played real hard. It was real evident off the faceoffs in the first period how they engaged us and they were here and they meant business.’