Connolly’s amazing journey

On a windy and rainy day in June 2007, Chris Connolly had plenty to think about as he and his mother made the eight-hour drive from their home in Duluth, Minn., to a tryout in Omaha, Neb.

This was going to be his final shot at keeping his dream of playing Division-I college hockey alive. He wasn’t just trying out for the Omaha Lancers; he was trying out for one last chance to play in a league where he might get noticed by a D-I team. He knew it had to be the tryout of his life. And it was.

Connolly made the Lancers and went on to become their leading goal-scorer that year en route to winning the United States Hockey League championship. The next season, he was the top-scoring freshman and one of seven players to play in every game for Boston University’s national title squad. Last year, he became the second Terrier since 1994 to record 30 or more points in each of his first two seasons. This season, he’ll be the second junior captain for BU in the last 33 years.

It’s all pretty incredible when you consider that after the 2006-07 season, Connolly nearly gave up on his dream.

The 5-foot-9, bald-headed forward had twice been cut by teams in the USHL, the country’s premier junior-A league, forcing him to spend two years in the less-lauded and less-recruited North American Hockey League.

Despite being one of the best players in the league for the now-defunct Fargo-Moorhead Jets, Connolly wasn’t getting looked at by a single D-I team. The only school that had shown even an inkling of curiosity &- nearby Bemidji State University, a mid-to-lower-tier D-I program at the time &- lost interest during the season.

“I’d say by the end of his second year, after the Bemidji thing fell through, he was starting to get a little down,” said Connolly’s father, Mark. “That was the one thing he kind of had going on. . .He started to think that, “Yeah, maybe this is gonna be over and I might have to consider something else.'”

In early May 2007, Connolly toured a few Midwestern D-III schools, reluctantly accepting that might be the best he could do. He had one more year of junior eligibility remaining, but at that point, there wasn’t much reason for optimism. So Connolly, with a polite urging from his parents, became content to just get on with school.

But then a couple weeks later, the Lancers called him during the USHL draft and asked if he would seriously consider coming down for their tryout if they picked him. Seeing it as his final opportunity to catch the eye of a D-I team, Connolly talked it over with his parents and said yes.

“I told myself, “If I’m gonna go down there and give it a shot, I have to lay everything out there,'” Connolly said as he took in the sights of TD Garden’s Legends Club at last Wednesday’s Hockey East Media Day.

Because USHL teams are only allowed to keep four 20-year-old players, Connolly knew he had his work cut out for him. The “epitome of a go-go type of hockey player,” as BU coach Jack Parker put it, not only made the Lancers, he also grabbed the attention of the Terriers’ then-associate head coach David Quinn.

“He went from nothing happening to everything happening in the span of one tryout,” his father said.

When the 2007-08 season opened with the USHL Fall Classic in Sioux Falls, S.D., BU was there watching. Once again, Connolly, whom his father describes as an “old-fashion northern Minnesota rink rat,” was one of the best players out there.

“He stood out like a sore thumb he was so good,” Parker said.

Less than two weeks later, Connolly had visited BU, fallen in love with the school’s facilities and the city, and committed to the Terriers for the 2008-09 season in what Parker described as a “whirlwind romance.” He turned down last-minute offers from the University of Maine and his hometown University of Minnesota-Duluth &- where his younger brother Jack was already committed &- in the process.

After captaining the Lancers to the Clark Cup title, Connolly arrived on Commonwealth Ave. as a virtually anonymous member of the Terriers’ freshman class. Five of his classmates were NHL draft picks and most of them had been on the recruiting radar for years. The only thing notable about Connolly was that he was 21 years old, the same age as some of the team’s upperclassmen.

But Connolly made an impact right off the bat. He scored BU’s first goal of the season in a 4-1 exhibition win over the University of New Brunswick and earned a spot in the lineup for all 45 regular-season and postseason games.

“Coming in, I just wanted to do whatever I could to play night in, night out,” Connolly said. “I didn’t care what kind of role that was. I knew as a freshman, you kind of have to work your way up and pay your dues. So I just wanted to come in and work hard and hope the coaching staff would see that. It ended up working out real well.”

It sure did.

Connolly finished the season with 10 goals and 20 assists and saw playing time on each of the Terriers’ top three lines. He capped the season off by scoring the opening goal in the national title game against Miami University and then assisting on Colby Cohen’s overtime game-winner.

“It was surreal,” his father said, “to see the kid that nobody had looked at rise to a contributing freshman on a national championship team for a renowned program like BU. When you look at his journey, it’s storybook.”

Last season, however, was anything but storybook. Connolly finished as the team’s second-leading scorer with 31 points and improved his points per game from 0.67 the year before to 0.86, but the Terriers went just 18-17-3 and missed the NCAA Tournament.

After the season, Parker said the team “pissed away a college hockey season that could’ve been much better than it was” because the team “had a lousy attitude.” Captain Kevin Shattenkirk expressed regret over not holding guys more accountable. In the offseason, Parker dismissed two players from the team and suspended two others for the start of this season for breaking team rules.

Now it’s up to Connolly, senior co-captain Joe Pereira and junior assistant captain David Warsofsky to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

“Last year was a good example of how not to go about the off-ice things,” Connolly said. “This year, we’re making it very clear that we need to transfer everything we’re doing in the weight room and on the ice to off the ice as well. . .We’ve been preaching that, and I think guys are in the right mindset right now.”

That preaching hasn’t gone unnoticed by Connolly’s coach.

“He’s already called some people out in terms of, “That’s not the way to do things,'” Parker said. “I think the captains at times last year were bad examples of what we wanted. Chris is a terrific example of what we want. He’s gonna tell them, “Do it the way I do it. And when you don’t do it the way I do it, I’m gonna call you out on it.’ He’s already done that a few times, and it got everyone’s attention.”

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that Connolly sets such a good example. After all, it takes quite a bit of character to overcome spending two years in a lower-tier junior league, having nothing to show for it and nearly having to give up on your dream.

“Somehow, he didn’t wear himself out the two years he played in Fargo, and he still had enough passion left to give it one more try,” his father said. “It’s kind of nice to see somebody with that kind of desire get the reward that he’s gotten with this BU scholarship.

“And nobody appreciates being there more than him. I remember telling Coach Quinn, “There won’t be a day over the four years he’s there that’ll go by that he’ll ever take it for granted.'”