After watching Sean Fields stand on his head for two periods Friday night, the last thing to expect was a nosedive.
Unfortunately, the overall performance of the Boston University junior netminder turned out to be a small story when the final buzzer sounded.
When Boston College defenseman John Adams lobbed a pass toward the BU end in the third period of Friday night’s game at Conte Forum from behind his own blue line, disaster was furthest from the mind, even with BC’s captain and scorer supreme Ben Eaves making an attempt to get on the other end of the pass.
Deflections get by goalies all the time. The sudden change in direction turns the hard, straight puck into a wobbling disk, impossible to stop.
But those deflections rarely come from the blueline.
This one did, and somehow, the twisting, turning, bouncing puck hopped Fields’ stick, which was blade-down on the ice to prevent a disastrous Buckner-esque kind of error.
Disbelief gave way to resignation as the puck slowly crawled into the net, as Eaves hopped up and down, equally disbelieving but joyous.
BC two. BU two.
But in reality, the game was over. Those kinds of mistakes don’t allow for immediate redemption. They’re far too cruel for that.
So when Ryan Murphy put the Eagles on top for good with 1:55 left, surprise was a hard emotion to drum up.
Sympathy for Fields was not.
His coach, Jack Parker, mentioned how bad he felt for the kid he said was BU’s MVP so far this season.
BC kids exiting their locker room said the same thing in passing, echoing the sentiments of an assistant coach who stood talking to a parent about how bad he felt for Fields.
The junior has been going through his best stretch of the season of late, and to see him in the first period on Friday night was to see an impenetrable force. Fields stopped Grade-A chance after Grade-A chance, flashing his glove, and moving from side to side easily and quickly to make an incredible pad save that he shouldn’t have even approached.
From high-above the rink, it was easily discernible that not only was Fields on, he knew he was on.
And then he got too stretched out. Word in the press-box was that he hurt his hamstring. As he continued to play well, the magic was gone. He was still making the saves, but the flair was missing, and he seemed a bit slower.
And when the Adams-to-Eaves guillotine dropped on BU’s chances, the transformation from Patrick Roy to college junior was complete.
Fields’ performance summarized the position of goaltender quite grotesquely, but perfectly.
No matter what the goalie does, one mistake can directly lift up or smack down his team. No other position is so tenuous.
This time, the risk of goaltending far outweighed the reward.
This time, Sean Fields couldn’t stop the puck.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
