WASHINGTON ‘- ‘Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead. Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.’
Before April 11, 2009, Red Smith’s description of Bobby Thompson’s 1951 ‘Shot Heard ‘Round the World’ was etched in sporting lore. Today, Jack Parker’s Terriers have revived the summation.
The top-seeded Boston University men’s hockey team rallied from two goals down with less than one minute to play to tie fourth-seeded Miami University Saturday before clinching the fifth national championship in program history in overtime.
‘All I can think of is that it’s the greatest game comeback I’ve been involved in,’ Parker, who earned his third title in 36 years behind the bench, said. ‘It’s unbelievable to go out the way we did.’
Sophomore defenseman Colby Cohen scored the game-winning goal at the 11-minute mark in overtime to lift the Terriers over Miami, 4-3, at Verizon Center.
With the Terriers (35-6-4) trailing by two with just under four minutes to play, Parker pulled freshman goaltender Kieran Millan in favor of a 6-on-5 situation in the offensive zone. With the man advantage, BU scored back-to-back goals in a 42-second stretch to draw even with Miami (23-13-5) and force overtime.
BU junior forward Zach Cohen scored the first of the last-minute tallies on a backhand wrist shot from just outside the crease. The puck slipped past Miami freshman goaltender Cody Reichard, bouncing off the top of his right pad and clipping his chest before it tricked across the goal line.
Terrier sophomore forward Nick Bonino finished off the improbable, last-minute effort when he deposited a feed from Hobey Baker Award winner Matt Gilroy with 17.4 seconds left in regulation.
Gilroy took a pass from senior forward Chris Higgins in the slot, coaxed Miami’s Justin Mercier to drop to the ice, and fed Bonino just inside of the right faceoff circle for the one-time slap shot.
‘The only thing I can say, we won that game because big?time players make big?time plays, and the guy sitting next to me [Gilroy] made an unbelievable play to get it over to Bonino to get that goal,’ Parker said. ‘We were real fortunate for the one before that. In my mind, players do something that needed to get done and it wasn’t my doing.’ I’m so proud of them.’
At 11:47 in overtime, Colby Cohen let loose a wrist shot from just inside the blue line that deflected off Miami defender Kevin Roeder. The puck tumbled through the air, unseen, into the back of the net.
‘I saw it go in and that was it,’ Cohen said. ‘I don’t remember anything after that. And just an unbelievable feeling.’
Cohen’s tally preserved a streak of 27 consecutive unbeaten games in 2008-09 when Bonino recorded a point.
With 35 victories, the Terriers became the winningest team in program history.
‘From the start of this year, what this team has done and what we’ve committed to the team, we got here,’ Gilroy said. ‘[Tonight] was unreal and it’s something the senior class will never ever forget.’ It’s unbelievable to go out the way we did.” ‘
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.
