Slow start dooms Terriers against Providence

The Agganis Arena scoreboard spoke for itself Saturday night.

At the conclusion of the first period, the No. 6 Boston University men’s hockey team had managed to muster just five shots against No. 8/9 Providence College, breaking the Terriers’ (4-1-0, 2-1 Hockey East) previous season-low of eight shots in the second period against the University of Massachusetts-Amherst on Oct. 10.

On the other side of the ice, Providence (2-3-1, 1-1 Hockey East) amassed 17 shots against the Terriers — just one fewer than the team compiled during the entirety of its game against BU Friday night.

It was a sobering showing from the Terriers, who could not overcome an ugly opening frame en route to a 2-1 loss, the team’s first loss of the 2014-15 campaign.

The results, however, came as little surprise to BU coach David Quinn.

“When you get bombarded like that, it’s a little demoralizing, and I just talked about it,” Quinn said when asked about what he told his team in the first intermission. “I said, ‘Hey, if I have to bet the next five years of my salary on what was going to happen in the first 20 minutes tonight, I would’ve a lot of money because you could just see it.’

“I’ve seen that enough where a good team that loses the way they did on Friday night comes back with a vengeance. And we just weren’t able to match them.”

The Friars (2-3-1, 1-1 Hockey East) — looking to avenge a 4-1 home drubbing at the Terriers Friday night — asserted themselves right from the drop of the puck, overwhelming the Terriers thanks to an aggressive forecheck and a bevy of ill-timed BU penalties.

Providence goaltender Jon Gillies dealt with little pressure in the opening frame, as the Terriers, who averaged just under 16 first-period shots in their first four regular-season games this season, struggled to establish much of anything on offense in the Friars’ zone.

Meanwhile, BU goaltender Matt O’Connor held his own against the opportunistic Friars, who peppered the Terrier netminder with 17 shots.

Despite O’Connor’s efforts between the pipes, the energized Providence offense eventually broke through. After BU freshman forward Nikolas Olsson was called for a boarding penalty at 7:52, the Friars used the man advantage to jump out to a 1-0 lead, as Providence forward Mark Jankowski fired the puck from the slot that blew past O’Connor to get the visitors on the board.

While Quinn acknowledged that the youth of his team might have played into BU’s lackadaisical response to Providence’s strong showing in the opening period, he noted that the Friars’ response was a commonplace reaction in a highly competitive conference such as Hockey East.

“I’m sure that was some of it, but I think even experienced teams, when you look at the history of our league, when you play back-to-back, the same team, I don’t care what the records are — if you win Friday night, you look at games past, the team that loses Friday probably has a great first period Saturday night, and we weathered the storm from a score standpoint. We didn’t weather the storm with the way the period went and the way we played.”

The Terriers made it a much more competitive match over the final 40 minutes of play, outshooting the Friars by a 33-16 margin while cutting what was a two-goal deficit in half thanks to junior forward Danny O’Regan’s score on the man advantage at 4:38 in the third.

Ultimately, the Terriers’ sluggish first period was too much for the team to overcome, as the Friars skated off the Agganis ice with a 2-1 lead, putting a closure to BU’s longest undefeated stretch to open a season in 13 years.

“There was zero pushback from us,” Quinn said. “Basically, I thought we played 30 minutes of hockey, and in this league, you cannot do that, especially against a team like that, and they showed why they were preseason No. 1 in our league.”

“I like how we pulled it together, and I liked how not only made a game of it, I really felt like at one point we were going to tie it,” Quinn continued. “But too little, too late.”