Dorothy said it best when she cried, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” This recent road skid for the Boston University women’s ice hockey team probably had many of them clicking their skates, praying to go back to cozy Walter Brown Arena.
After dropping the last four games of their road trip, the Terriers defeated the University of Vermont 3-1 to remain undefeated against the Catamounts, and, more importantly, undefeated in good old Walter Brown Arena.
“At home, the mindset and the confidence [of the team] amount to a lot,” said BU coach Brian Durocher.
Being comfortable is an important factor in putting together a winning effort on the ice, and the Terriers seem to have found a nice little niche at Walter Brown. Notching three wins and two ties here at home, BU has managed to create quite a home team advantage.
“If you get 200-300 people at Boston College, UVM or a University of New Hampshire, it’s not such a big deal,” said BU coach Brian Durocher. “In this building, 200-300 people create a great atmosphere.”
Having a good home record affects team morale, team chemistry and of course, the team record.
“Success starts to snowball in a positive direction,” Durocher said.
For the players, though, playing on the home ice provides the ability to breathe a sigh of relief. Knowing all the ins and outs, all the crevices and charms of Walter Brown can give the Terriers a strong edge.
“It’s nice to come home finally,” said freshman forward Laurel Koller. “It’s good to be in our house and keep our unbeaten in Walter Brown streak alive.”
Koller, who had two of the Terriers’ three goals against UVM, has become quite a scoring force for the Terriers leading the team in goals, assists and total points on the season with 13.
“I’m just in the right place at the right time,” Koller said. “The first goal was a complete scrum in front of the net and the puck just hit my stick, the second was just a shot on net and it went in.”
It seems the Terriers just can’t help but click at home. On the home ice, the offense seems sharper and the defense seems tougher. Everyone on the team seems a little more hyped up when they are playing in their home whites and the fans are cheering in the stands.
“The fans are awesome here,” said junior captain Cara Hendry. “They’re really loud and have tons of energy. We walk into the road arenas and these places are just dead quiet.”
When the fans are up and screaming, the acoustics of Walter Brown Arena can be daunting to an opponent and the Terriers have used that to their advantage in piecing together several inspirational comebacks thus far this season.
The four-game home stand at the start of the season was instrumental in their early-season success and the Terriers hope to regain some of that success after a rocky road trip.
“Hopefully we’re back on track,” Hendry said. “We had so much early success that maybe we thought it was going to be easy. But we have to show up to play every night, 60 minutes.”
Walter Brown Arena has seen its fair share of winning streaks but, with a team in its first year as an NCAA Division I hockey team, an undefeated home record is quite an achievement. It is one of the main factors in why the Terriers remain atop Hockey East.
And after coming off a rather rocky road trip, yesterday afternoon the Terriers regained their winning ways and realized that there really is no place like Walter Brown Arena.
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.
