The ‘second season’ is in full bloom, and the first-year players on the Boston University men’s hockey team don’t look like freshmen anymore. Although the Terriers’ deep group of seniors did most of the grunt work to get the team into the postseason, the rookies are beginning to flex their muscles and leave an imprint on every game the team plays.
Freshman goalie Kieran Millan raised his game to the next level sometime in the depths of winter, and classmate David Warsofsky’s speed and awareness on the blue line have been the perfect complement to junior Eric Gryba’s physical game all season long. The Terriers’ freshman forward line ‘-‘- Chris Connolly, Corey Trivino and Vinny Saponari ‘-‘- took longer to join the mix, but is now becoming another scoring option behind the top two senior-heavy lines.
‘I think the emergence of Corey Trivino, playing as well as he is without the puck, has made that line go,’ BU coach Jack Parker said after Trivino scored in Sunday’s NCAA Regional Final with the University of New Hampshire.
Though the trio is playing with a purpose as BU prepares for the Frozen Four, it took a while for the line to gel.
Connolly spent much of the season bouncing around the lineup chart, filling in anywhere that Parker needed him. He played up on the first line when senior Chris Higgins missed some time earlier in the year, filled in for sophomore Nick Bonino for a spell, and he has served as the Terriers’ top man on the penalty-kill forecheck. But for much of the second half of the season, he was running in place, struggling to match the impact his energy had on the team early in the year.
Saponari seemed to be in the same boat, working plenty hard on the ice but having a limited effect on the outcome of games. The missing link for both freshman wingers was Trivino, the center of their young line. A second-round draft pick of the New York Islanders, Trivino showed the necessary talent to produce alongside Connolly and Saponari, but lacked the consistency expected of him.
After missing a stretch of games in October and November due to knee and shoulder injuries, Trivino returned to the ice, allowing Parker to reunite his freshman trio. By the middle of January, he once again found himself out of the lineup. This time he was being benched because Parker said he was unhappy with the effort he received from Trivino in the previous game.
Whether the benching has anything to do with the recent success of the third line is uncertain, but the three freshmen have elevated their level of play and are now an important facet of the BU offense.
‘The other two guys have had great freshman years, but now all of a sudden . . . [Trivino] growing up right in front of you, his physical maturity and his poise, has really changed things,’ Parker said.
In Saturday’s NCAA opener against Ohio State University, Trivino mucked hard along the boards to earn a loose puck and then worked a give-and-go with senior Matt Gilroy, who fed the rookie pivot cutting to the net for an easy tip-in. It turned out to be the game-winning goal in the Terriers’ 8-3 victory.
The strong play continued into the UNH game, in which the third line made its mark. While BU’s top two lines failed to create scoring chances, it was the freshmen that kept the offense from stagnating.
Every time the Terriers gained possession, the three rookies weaved their way through the neutral zone, skillfully skating past a Wildcat defense that was trying desperately to clog the ice. The hard work paid off in the first period when Trivino won a faceoff to Saponari, who dished to Connolly for a shot on net. Trivino alertly pressured the cage and hammered home Connolly’s rebound to give BU the edge.
‘That line played great this weekend, and I thought they played great last weekend,’ Parker said. ‘We got a big goal [from them.]’
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