When the locker room door swung open, the cheers could be heard more than 30 feet down the hallway. And even from that far away, a careful ear could tell that some of those cheers had a jealous, mocking tone buried deep inside them.
When one of your teammates tallies a hat trick, you feel a little bit jealous. When two of your teammates tally hat tricks, you feel even more jealous. But when those two teammates are defensemen, it would be hard to blame a still-struggling offensive corps if any congratulatory cheers were tinted green with at least a small bit of envy.
With an anemic Terrier offense struggling after a lackluster 5-2 loss at Harvard University Tuesday night and a frustrating 46-shot, two-goal game Friday against Dartmouth College, the BU blueliners took matters into their own hands Sunday night, scoring six of the team’s seven goals in a 7-2 rout of Yale University.
And while no coach would dare argue with a seven-goal outburst, BU head man Jack Parker made it very clear that he would much rather see his struggling forwards finally tickle the twine.
‘We would have been much better off if five forwards got those goals,’ Parker said. ‘We may have won 7-2 and we may have gotten a bunch of goals, but [senior Frantisek] Skladany didn’t get any, [senior Mark] Mullen didn’t get any, [junior Brian] McConnell didn’t get any. When are we going to start getting some goals from these guys?’
The answer to that question could come as early as this weekend, when the Terriers face two of the top teams in Hockey East Boston College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. But if the defensemen continue to play like they did Sunday, or if they can share some of their magic dust with the big guns up front, then Parker may not have much to worry about.
When Whitney scored two goals in less than 180 seconds in the first period, the Terriers had equaled their goal total from the Harvard and Dartmouth games after just 11 minutes of action. But unlike Tuesday night, when no Terrier found the net after a first-period pair by senior Kenny Magowan, BU kept pushing toward Yale goalie Matt Modelski.
Just 50 seconds after Whitney’s second goal, the Yale defense allowed Schaeffer to cruise into the slot untouched, where he received a perfect pass from sophomore John Laliberte and left no doubt, breaking the water bottle with a perfect wrister over Modelski’s shoulder.
After Schaeffer scored another goal halfway through the second, the Terrier faithful started loosening their hats, just in case a toss was warranted for either of the two red-hot blueliners. Schaeffer gave them a chance to test their arms when he fired home a slapper from the point with less than a minute to play in the period, finishing the first hat trick by a BU freshman since Tom Poti tallied the trifecta on Feb. 28, 1998 against Massachusetts.
‘The last hat trick I had was probably when I was playing Peewees,’ Schaeffer said. ‘Sometimes it just happens to go your way.’
Whitney left the fans hanging just a little bit longer than his rookie teammate, finishing one final rush with less than 90 seconds left on the clock by flipping a beautiful wrister over the shoulder of backup goalie Peter Cohen. The same hats that found their way onto the ice half an hour earlier floated over the glass as the linesman was forced to scoop them up again.
Whitney appropriately wearing a red BU Hockey cap during his postgame interview said that his teammates were impressed with what he and Schaeffer had done, if not a little jealous.
‘They were laughing in there [the locker room],’ Whitney said of his teammates. ‘You don’t see this happen too often. I think everyone was happy.
‘They’re [the forwards] probably just shaking their heads. Who knows what [Skladany]’s doing right now. But he played real well, so it’s positive.’
But until people like Skladany (zero goals), Mullen (1 goal) and McConnell (1 goal) start finishing their chances, Parker just may have to look toward the blue line for those positives. And while any win, especially a five-goal rout, can improve a team’s confidence heading into an important weekend, Parker disagreed with Whitney’s assessment of the team’s attitude following the win.
‘They were more frustrated tonight than they were Friday,’ Parker said. ‘Because the puck seems to be jumping in the net for everybody but me, and me happens to be a forward … they’re saying to themselves, ‘When am I gonna contribute to our team?’ It’s not a selfish thing with them, they want to help our team.
‘This game did not help our morale at all,’ Parker added, ‘because we stunk in the second period and we played OK in the third. This game did not help us morale-wise the Dartmouth game helped us more than this one did.’
The Dartmouth game ended with a devastating game-tying goal that turned a ‘W’ into a ‘T’ just as the Terriers were ready to celebrate only their second win in nearly a month and a half. But it also included 46 BU shots and countless scoring chances from the Terrier attackers. And while Parker is still obviously concerned about the lack of offensive output, one thing he doesn’t have to worry about is the play of his defense.
‘Schaeffer’s playing extremely well in all phases of the game, and I think Ryan Whitney in the last six or seven games has looked like the All-American defenseman we thought he’d become and he looks absolutely terrific out there,’ Parker said. ‘He played great the other night against Dartmouth, and he’s had a great run here.
‘He seems to have the monkey off his back,’ Parker added.
For the Terriers’ sake come Friday night, let’s hope Whitney coughs up a dollar to put that monkey on an inbound ‘B’ train.
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