It might not seem right that after a season just about as different from last year’s as two successful seasons can be, the Boston University women’s hockey team finds itself in the exact same place it was last year at this time: facing Mercyhurst College in the first round of the NCAA tournament at 3 p.m. on Saturday.
This year, though, the teams’ positions are reversed, as third-seeded BU (25-6-4) will host sixth-seeded Mercyhurst (29-5-0) at Walter Brown Arena, after falling 4-1 to the Lakers last year at their home rink in Erie, Pa. In 2010, the Terriers squeaked into the tournament as a No.8 seed after winning the Hockey East championship, while Mercyhurstwas seeded No. 1.
In addition to avenging last year’s loss, the Terriers will have added motivation to come out with fire on Saturday after a stunning Hockey East semifinal loss to Northeastern University on March 5. After a dominant first period in which they outshot the Huskies 25-9 and only came out with one goal, BU ended up losing 4-2, stonewalled by Husky goalie Florence Schelling.
“I think we need to mark our players and not get caught standing around,” BU coach Brian Durocher said of the biggest change the team needs to make from the Northeastern game to the Mercyhurst game. “[Against Northeastern] we got caught watching the puck, watching to see where the rebound was going to go, and figuring our goalie would just take care of it.”
After winning the conference regular-season championship for the first time, the setback against Northeastern could have taken a considerable amount of wind out of BU’s postseason sails. They do have some positive news going into the weekend, though: Durocher said that freshman forward Marie-Philip Poulin, who is continuing to recover from a fractured hand and lacked strength in her shot against Northeastern, is progressing toward being 100 percent for Saturday.
As Poulin, who was the team’s leading scorer when she got hurt on Feb. 5, gets back to her game, freshman goalie Kerrin Sperry could be an unexpected question mark for the Terriers. Sperry put together an impressive rookie year, finishing in the top five in Hockey East in save percentage and goals-against average, but has given up at least three goals in four of her last six games.
“I just think it’s tough to be perfect for a whole year,” Durocher said. “She had a fantastic run back there and I think there are a couple goals that she’d like to have back, and maybe a couple times when we left her out to dry.”
BU will need Sperry to return to her early-season form to keep them in the game against a Mercyhurst offense that averaged 5.15 goals per game this year. Paced by senior forward Meghan Agosta’s nation-leading 84 points – for a 2.55 points-per-game average – the Lakers have scored at the second-best rate in the country. Agosta, a nominee for the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in women’s college hockey, finished the year with 27 more points than the next-highest scorer on her team, forward Jesse Scanzano.
“Luckily we have three MVP candidates of our own, and Meghan, being a right shot on that left wing is coming down the middle a lot,” Durocher said. “So we’re lucky to have Tara Watchorn and Catherine Ward and Kasey Boucher as defensemen on that side. But with her and with Vicky Bendus and Scanzano, Mercyhurst is a real deep team and a real talented team.”
Although the Lakers’ offensive stats may be intimidating, the Terriers edge them out in team defense, giving up 1.80 goals per game to Mercyhurst’s 1.94, and Hockey East is a tougher conference overall than College Hockey America – while BU regularly faced two national top-10 teams in Providence College and Boston College, the Lakers are the only nationally ranked team in the CHA.
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