TROY, New York — It’s been repeated over and over again throughout all of the 2014-15 season — the No. 2 Boston University men’s hockey squad is a third-period team.
Indeed, the Terriers (11-3-2, 7-1-2 Hockey East) outscored opponents 29-6 in final stanzas this season entering Saturday’s game against the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as compared to only scoring five goals in the first and 14 goals in the second period.
But BU has proven lately that maybe it can be a bit of a second-period team, too, especially with a three-goal second in a convincing 5-1 win over RPI (6-12-1).
“I thought we played a much better second where we started moving the puck quicker and not spending as much time in our end and being a little bit more responsible defensively and shot the puck more,” said BU head coach David Quinn. “We didn’t have a lot of shot attempts in the first period, I thought we shot it a lot more in the second period and we were rewarded for it.”
The Terriers opened the game with just 11 shots to the Engineers’ 18, but outshot RPI 15-10 in the second period. Freshman defenseman John MacLeod kicked off the scoring for BU with a goal 11:57 into the second frame. Junior forward Danny O’Regan added a tally less than three minutes later, and freshman defenseman Brandon Hickey scored his second goal in as many games with six seconds left in the period.
“We got off to a pretty shaky start again, but we knew we needed to have a strong second period because it would be tough to maybe come back from a lead in this building against a big, older team,” O’Regan said. “So it was an important period.
“We kind of got away from our game in the first, we weren’t being fast or physical, so I think we just upped our intensity a lot, and made a lot more simple plays. And we got rewarded just by getting pucks to the net, which I think has been a game plan of ours too.”
Last week, against No. 19 Merrimack College on Dec. 6, BU had a similar game, scoring three goals in the second period. O’Regan scored two of the Terriers’ goals in that frame, and Hickey added his first career goal to give BU a 3-1 lead headed into the third period. Against the Warriors (10-5-2, 4-4-1 Hockey East), BU had a shots-on-goal advantage of 17-9 in the second.
The difference in this Saturday’s game? BU kept the Engineers off the score sheet until the third period, thanks in part to more than 57 minutes of shutout hockey from junior goaltender Matt O’Connor. Even then, though, O’Connor had to make a few hustling saves in the first period to keep the game scoreless.
“We were much better in the second period because I don’t think there was a guy in that locker room that was happy with their performance in the first period,” Quinn said. “We need to understand that we usually get people’s best and they were more desperate than we were … When you’re dealing with 18- to 22-year-olds, their concentration level isn’t too high and consistency is an issue and that’s been an issue for us.
“But I was really proud of the way we battled back and got it together. I thought we had long stretches in the second where we were playing the way we need to play.”
Sarah covers men's hockey and other sports for The Daily Free Press, and is the chairman of Back Bay Publishing Co., Inc. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the FreeP during the Spring 2014 semester and was Sports Editor in Fall 2013. She has also written for the Boston Globe and seattlepi.com. When she's not writing, she loves baking and going to concerts. You can contact her by tweeting her at @Kirkpatrick_SJ or emailing her at sjkirkpa@bu.edu.
