With the Boston University women’s hockey team’s rousing sweep of last weekend’s home-and-home series with Northeastern University by the scores of 3-0 and 8-1, respectively, predictions for tomorrow’s Hockey East quarterfinal matchup between the same two squads can be based on two different schools of thought.The first: because the Terriers (17-10-7, 14-6-1 HE) now know exactly how to defeat the Huskies (12-19-3, 7-13-1), they will be able to repeat last weekend’s performance at Walter Brown Arena.
The other: games are completely independent of each other, and outcomes from the past do not have a large impact on those in the present and future.
If one were to prescribe to the first school, then he or she would have to look no further than the stats sheets from last weekend’s contests. Fourteen different Terriers had at least one point, and out of those, seven had at least two.
Having perhaps the best performances against Northeastern last weekend were a pair of lefties who will enter the Hockey East tournament from opposite ends of the experience spectrum: senior forward Erin Seman and freshman forward Jenelle Kohanchuk. The pair ended last week’s series with a total of four points each. Both had one goal and three assists over the two games.
Kohanchuk, in particular, continued a recent hot streak. With two points in each of last week’s contests, Kohanchuk extended her streak of two-point performances to four. Despite playing in only 26 of the team’s 34 games this year, the freshman ended the regular season tied for the team lead in points (28) with junior forward Melissa Anderson, who had a goal and two assists of her own last weekend, and is the team’s most efficient player with a team-leading plus-20 rating.
The Terriers also got strong performances out of two other upperclassmen. Senior forward Gina Kearns had two goals and one assist to become the first Terrier in BU women’s hockey history to surpass the 100-point barrier for her career. Senior goalie Allyse Wilcox will get the start for the Terriers in net after allowing only one goal on 37 shots last weekend. The Terriers will rely on quality performances from both seniors if they are to duplicate the wins of a week ago.
However, there are those, BU coach Brian Durocher among them, who discredit last week’s wins as a thing of the past and are focused only on the here and now.
Evidence for such a case comes from BU’s first game against Northeastern back on Jan. 8. Despite putting 31 shots on net, the Terriers were unable to put anything past sophomore goalie Leah Sulyma as Northeastern won, 2-0, on goals by junior Lindsay Berman and sophomore Lori Antflick. Since that loss, BU has turned itself around, going 3-0-0 against the Huskies, including a win in the Beanpot consolation game.
Durocher, in fact, expects the Huskies to follow in the footsteps of the Terriers and to come back with a little more fire after falling twice last weekend.
‘They’re going to step it up because they’re a proud team and they’re a solid team with great goaltending,’ Durocher said. ‘They know exactly what we know. Everything now is behind us. Those last three games mean zip right now. The only game that matters is the one ahead of us.’
In fact, Northeastern has one of the best goaltending tandems in Hockey East this season in Sulyma and freshman Florence Schelling, who netminded for the Swiss national team before coming to the college ranks. The two rank 21st and 22nd in the nation in goals-against average with the nearly identical stats of 2.24 and 2.25, respectively. Schelling (.932) ranks ninth in the country in save percentage and Sulyma (.921) sits at 18th.
With strong opposing goaltending and a here-and-now mindset, Durocher and his players know that although they may be favorites in this quarterfinal matchup, they will still have their hands full.
‘There’s always a little more pressure on the favorite, which we’ll have that role, but we’re a small favorite,’ Durocher said. ‘There isn’t going to be a three-goal margin or a five-goal margin. It’s going to be a knock-down, drag-out game where one goal is probably going to decide it, and I hope we have one more than them.’
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