Immaturity, mistakes lead to No. 6 BU loss to USNTDP

With 1:06 remaining on the clock in third period, freshman forward Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson skated to the penalty box with more than a hint of frustration for an interference call.

Down three goals, both Forsbacka Karlsson and his teammates standing on the bench had the look of exasperation and disappointment.

It was the fifth and final penalty for the No. 6 Boston University men’s hockey team in its 7-4 loss against the U.S. National Team Development Program.

No, it did not lead to a goal for Team USA, but the infraction all but put the final mark on what was an exhibition game to forget for the Terriers.

In a word, it was sloppy.

The Terriers made mistakes in all phases of the game throughout the night, from missed defensive zone assignments to offensive-end turnovers.

With 13 underclassmen in the starting lineup — including six freshmen — it can be argued that there could be a reasonable expectation of early growing pains. After all, BU has played in just three games, two of them being exhibitions.

On this night, head coach David Quinn said that his team’s lack of maturity and youth got the best of it, especially late in the game.

“Right now we’re just too immature,” Quinn said. “We play immature hockey, we play high-risk hockey. That’s not how we’re going to have success. And it might take some time, it might take some time, but every time we crawl back into it, we weren’t mentally tough enough to stay with it and we weren’t building on any momentum.”

Statistically speaking, BU’s shot total, on paper, looked good enough to beat any team. The Terriers outshot Team USA in all three periods, more than doubling the U-18s’ shot output by game’s end. However, this offensive focus may have led to more problems than solutions for BU.

This was especially apparent on Team USA’s fourth goal, when forward Casey Mittelstadt walked in almost alone on a breakaway and beat senior goaltender Sean Maguire low stick side. What was worse was the fact that it was the second goal BU allowed in a 28-second span in the second period.

Puck watching and worrying too much about making all the right plays in the offensive zone is an issue BU needs to address, according to senior winger Ahti Oksanen.

“We’re just too focused on the offense,” Oksanen said. “You can’t win if the opposite team scores seven goals. It’s pretty much impossible to win. So we just need to mature and start playing some defense.”

And that defense, which was supposed to be stalwart even without senior captain Matt Grzelcyk for the foreseeable future, had difficulties for most of the night. The pairs mixed and matched in all three periods, but it was hard to find any combination that seemed to work for more than a shift at a time. This was never more apparent when Team USA scored three consecutive goals in the third period after the Terriers had cut the lead to one.

Sophomore blue liner Brandon Fortunato returned to the lineup and was expected to give the Terriers more depth and maturity in the defensive end. As good as he looked on the power play and controlling the offensive point, Fortunato finished Friday with a minus-4, a team worst.

Mistakes in all, Quinn said he sees at least one silver lining in all of this immaturity — this game didn’t count.

BU can look to right the ship in a hurry in Saturday night’s regular-season home opener against an even younger University of Wisconsin team that has 11 true freshmen.

“We get to move on and play tomorrow night, which is good,” Quinn said. “We don’t have to sit with this too long and it’ll be, obviously, certainly a different atmosphere in here tomorrow night. We’re playing Wisconsin and hopefully we can build on what we did at Union [College].”