…and a pair of white-outs

LOWELL – Think ghosts and goblins are scary? How about giving up seven goals to a team that hadn’t scored in three games? Coming within two minutes of a home loss to a high school team? Suffering so many defensive breakdowns that the UMass-Lowell athletic scholarship fund, which receives $50 per River Hawk goal, is $350 richer on this Halloween morning?

The blood that dripped from Eric Thomassian’s nose onto the Agganis Arena ice Saturday night wasn’t the grisliest sight on a downright spooky weekend for the Boston University men’s hockey team, which, as coach Jack Parker said, is clearly “still trying to find who we are.”

In a 7-4 loss in Lowell Friday, BU opened the floodgates for an ailing River Hawk offense that had been shut out twice last weekend by Providence College and only scored a goal the weekend before in a 3-1 loss to the Terriers at Agganis. The next night, in a 3-2 overtime win over the U.S. Under-18 team, BU almost became the highest-profile college victim of the National Development Team ever, but a late escape prompted more a sigh of relief than a celebration.

But that game didn’t mean anything in the standings. The Lowell game did.

“One team came to play hard, and the other team did not,” Parker said of Friday night’s effort (or lack thereof) at Tsongas Arena. “Now we’ve played two games in a row where we think we’re a little better than we are.”

The first was last weekend’s 3-2 home loss to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which saw a 2-0 lead vanish. Friday, the Terriers (1-2, 1-1 Hockey East) never led. Lowell scored early, on a 5-on-3 tally in the first period that stemmed directly from a Kenny Roche slashing penalty that Parker called “stupid.”

Less than 10 seconds into a penalty kill, Roche took a swing at the puck carrier right in front of referee Scott Zelkin.

“If you’re gonna take slashing penalties when you’re already killing penalties, there’s no sense in me putting you out there,” Parker said.

Seconds later, with BU defenseman Dan Spang stripped of his stick (and Parker lamenting the no-call), Cleve Kinley slid a quick pass to Andrew Martin on the doorstep. Spang could only watch it go by.

But that wasn’t the dagger. BU tied it later in the first when Brian McGuirk deposited the rebound of a Pete MacArthur crossbar-ringer past Peter Vetri. It was McGuirk’s first regular-season collegiate goal.

“A little weight off the shoulders, but it’s tough in the loss,” McGuirk said. The reason for the loss? A second period in which the River Hawks (2-5, 1-3 Hockey East, after a Saturday loss to Union College) scored three times in less than 10 minutes, including a tough-angle tally from Mark Pandolfo on which BU defenseman Jekabs Redlihs fell down to pave the path.

“When you make physical mistakes, you just gotta forget about it. When you make mental mistakes – that’s where the problem is,” Parker said. “We made a lot of mental mistakes.

“It was like ‘Yeah, we’ll get another one pretty soon.’ And pretty soon it was 4-1,” he added.

One of the mental mistakes was John Laliberte’s penalty for “deliberately spraying the goaltender” later in the second, which led to Lowell’s third goal. The fourth River Hawk tally came on a wild deflection, but Parker still called goalie John Curry to the bench.

“I just thought we were out to lunch, I didn’t want him getting lit up here,” Parker said. “I didn’t think it was his fault as much as it was the guys in front of him’s fault. He didn’t have a great night, that’s for sure – not just the goals, but he looked like he was fighting the puck a little bit.”

Stephan Siwiec replaced him and faced a barrage of shots of his own a minute into the third. When Sean Sullivan laid a resounding hit on Bobby Robins, Pandolfo picked up the loose puck and snuck in on Siwiec alone to score. A minute later, Elias Godoy lunged to tip in a great pass.

Thirty seconds after that, the tide turned, but it was far too late for the Terriers, who already trailed 6-1. Sullivan’s seemingly casual snapshot found the top corner past Vetri, and seemed to remind the Terriers that they too are capable of scoring. And Robins’ game misconduct for a hit on Thomassian (and a salute to a cheering crowd on the way out with Thomassian down on the ice), opened up a five-minute power play.

The Terriers scored twice in that span – once on a nifty move by Brandon Yip on the 4-on-4, and the other on a John Laliberte rebound a man up – but BU played too frantically after that. Pandolfo finished his hat trick (a “cheesy” one, as his coach Blaise MacDonald called it) into an empty net with a second left.

“Maybe they lightened up, maybe all the sudden their goaltender went out to lunch, let in a couple that he shouldn’t have let in, so now it looks like a pretty good comeback,” Parker said. “But in general it was a lousy effort by the BU hockey team, coupled with a real good rebound effort for the Lowell team.”

“All week, our motto was just ‘rebound, rebound,'” Pandolfo said. But MacDonald, sitting next to him, whispered “respond, respond.”

“Respond and rebound,” Pandolfo continued. “And we did that tonight.”

The Terriers did that Saturday – but just barely. After a lackluster first period that had them trailing 2-0 (and being outclassed by a team of 17-year-olds), BU got it together in the second, but still had trouble scoring on goalie Joe Palmer, who was spectacular in his 43 saves. But they chipped away, with Yip scoring late in the third and freshman Chris Higgins tying the game with 1:30 to play. Kevin Schaeffer’s blue-line bullet won it for BU with 40 seconds left in overtime.

Despite the fact that BU played some of its reserves, the Under-18 team came in at just 2-5 against college teams this year, with wins against Lake Superior State (1-2-3) and Canisius College (2-4). They even lost to second-year program Robert Morris University, 6-5, which makes one thing very clear, as McGuirk pointed out Friday.

“We gotta get it together,” he said.