ORONO, Maine – If University of Maine forward Derek Damon had anything with garlic in it for lunch, John Curry would have found out with about 11 minutes to go in the third period Sunday afternoon.
That’s when Damon was the fortunate recipient of a pass in a fortunate spot – about two feet in front of Curry, alone. With his Black Bears down a goal, the crowd anticipated a tie game. Everyone stood up, and the screams inside of the constantly crazy Alfond Arena rose along a crescendo.
Then – a gasp. Damon looked at Curry and hesitated – he might have known his fate right then. He deked right (Curry didn’t move). He deked left (Curry didn’t move). He deked right and shot left, and Curry didn’t even make a simple pad save, but practically kicked the puck out of the zone with his right pad.
Alfond went silent.
Of course, it was hard not to shut up upon witnessing the Second Coming of John Curry. His teammates turned in an inspiring in-your-face performance against the No. 2 team in the country, but with about 12 minutes left in the third, the game shifted permanently to the BU zone. Maine battered shot after shot at Curry, but the junior Minnesotan stopped all 19 futile whacks in the period -19 of 37 saves in the game – sucking the air out of Alfond and blowing life back into his storybook career.
“The best thing about our game was how well John Curry played,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “He looked like the John Curry of last year – very, very poised. Right from the get-go, he was like, ‘Go ahead, shoot, see what happens.'”
Maine certainly did shoot, behind a Sunday afternoon gathering of 5,493 in the northern stretches of American civilization. No more than a dozen of those fans seemed to be wearing scarlet.
“They’re pretty ruthless and they’re hanging right over you,” Curry said of the Maine student section, which literally is directly above the goal he defended in the first and third. “But this is one of the best arenas to play at in the league for sure, because it’s not hard to get up for a game like this. I love fans like that.”
They certainly didn’t return the adoration. Curry spotted the Black Bears a 1-0 lead in the first when Maine captain Greg Moore poked home a loose puck on the power play that Curry said no one in the BU locker room even saw develop.
But after that, nothing developed. In the second, Curry held off a mid-period charge, enabling his teammates to convert a pair of escapes from their own end – on Jason Lawrence’s unfathomable move and Brad Zancanaro’s second-effort smash.
In the third, the jumpy Terriers right away seemed to have trouble believing they held a lead at Alfond, but Curry stood in. The most apparent indicator that he was fully back was not the numbers or the jaw-dropping stop on Damon, but the way he carried himself in the crease.
On a half dozen occasions in the third, Curry gazed through traffic, read the shot and snatched it with his glove – not standing perfectly upright, but not hunched over either. Just loose, with puck in hand.
“He looked to be in complete control,” Parker said.
That hadn’t been the case all year. He looked good in the opener against UMass-Lowell, but a couple of the goals Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute used in a comeback looked like the old John Curry would have had them. The second time against Lowell, Curry didn’t make it out of the second period, and allowed a pair of goals that the old John Curry definitely would have saved.
He watched one of his backups, Karson Gillespie, play a solid exhibition game against the U.S. Under-18 team, but it might have been something else that got him going. Last year, his first start – and first win, by a 4-1 tally – came against the University of Vermont, BU’s visitors on Friday.
This year, Curry stood tall during a number of Catamount power plays in the third – including a brief 6-on-3 advantage – that enabled the Terriers to cling to the 4-2 win.
“He won it for us,” sophomore Pete MacArthur said that night, “just like he did a lot of times last year. It’s great to have that confidence in your goalie. It changes the whole team. The guy between the pipes is going to make those three or four big saves in the game. It just makes everyone that much more loose in front of him.”
“He told me, ‘Let’s schedule UVM for the first game of the year next year,'” Parker said.
But it didn’t matter who or where he was playing Sunday. Behind a resurgent defense that saw a newcomer (Matt Gilroy) solidify a spot in the lineup, much-improved efforts from Jekabs Redlihs and Kevin Kielt and the usual expected dominance of Kevin Schaeffer, Dan Spang and Sean Sullivan, BU’s anchor is back. The Terriers suddenly have a 3-1 record in Hockey East, two wins in their pockets over top-six teams and one of the best goalies in the country.
Of course, it wasn’t all John Curry. Midway through the third, Chris Bourque and Boomer Ewing’s old high school linemate Billy Ryan blew around the left post, getting Curry to commit. By the time Ryan wrapped the puck around, Curry wasn’t even close to the puck – but Spang was, taking the blow to his torso has he lay across the red line from post to post.
“I took the shooter and unfortunately, I committed way too early,” Curry said. “My teammates came up big for me.” Not that he didn’t return the favor.
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