While the two other Boston University winter sports teams on this page found themselves fighting in their respective NCAA tournaments, the men’s hockey team found itself on the outside looking in when it came to its sport’s March collegiate bracket. This will be the first time that the Terriers will miss the NCAA tournament in consecutive years since they missed it during the 1987-88 and 1988-89 seasons.
The Terriers, who ended the year with a 19-12-8 overall record, played their last contest of the 2010-11 season when they fell to sixth-seeded Northeastern University 5-4 in Game 3 of its Hockey East quarterfinal matchup with the Huskies.
Despite the disappointing upset in the conference tournament, hope remained that BU could still find a way to back into the NCAAs. But a Western Michigan University win over University of Michigan in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association tourney on Friday dashed all hopes of BU sneaking into the top 15 of the all-important PairWise Rankings. BU finished the season 17th in the PWR and was therefore the second team out of the bracket.
In BU’s stead, three other Hockey East teams made the NCAA bracket that was announced Sunday morning. Boston College, which captured its third Hockey East title in four years with a 5-3 win over Merrimack College Saturday, took the third overall seed and will play 14th-seeded Colorado College this Friday at 9 p.m. in the tournament’s first round in St. Louis. Merrimack took the sixth overall seed and will face off against No. 11 University of Notre Dame in nearby Manchester, N.H. University of New Hampshire, which took the 13th seed, will also play in the same regional bracket as the Wildcats take on No. 4 Miami University. Both games in the
Manchester regional will take place Saturday at 7:30 and 4 p.m. respectively.
With the season officially coming to a close, so does the collegiate careers of senior forward Joe Pereira and senior goalie Adam Kraus. Pereira, who served as one of the team’s two captains in his final year on Commonwealth Avenue, notched 15 goals and six assists in 2010-11 to finish with a career line of 27-34–61. Kraus only received 4:59 of ice time this season and made two saves in that time. The Irving, Texas native appeared in five games in his four years on campus, amassing a 3.72 goals-against average and a .878 save
percentage over that time.
Hockey East awards
With BU out of the national tourney picture, any notions of the Terriers bringing home any team hardware were immediately killed. However, there were still individual Hockey East accolades to be awarded, and the big winner in that department was Charlie Coyle.
The freshman center/right winger won the Rookie of the Year award. He led all Hockey East freshmen in conference scoring with 21 points on six goals and 15 assists, narrowly beating out UMass’s Michael Pereira – the award’s runner-up – by a point. He joins Kieran Millan (2009) and Brandon Yip (2006) as the three BU players to win the award in the last six seasons.
Coyle was also named to the conference All-Rookie Team alongside Michael Pereira and BU blue-liner Adam Clendening.
Defenseman David Warsofsky and goalie Kieran Millan each earned spots on the Hockey East Second Team in their junior years. Millan, who led all netminders in saves during conference play with 799, was also a runner-up for the Player of the Year and Three Stars titles that went to UNH forward Paul Thompson.
Clendening and sophomore forward Alex Chiasson were named Honorable Mention All-Stars for their play during the 2010-11 season.
BC’s Jerry York won his second Coach of the Year title after leading the Eagles to a 20-win conference season. Thompson, Maine forward Gustav Nyquist, BC forward Cam Atkinson, UNH defenseman Blake Kessel, BC defenseman Brian Dumoulin and BC goalie John Muse were named as the conference First Team All-Stars.
The three forwards of that group are also finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, given to the nation’s top collegiate player.
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