Terriers showcase flair for the dramatic one last time

WASHINGTON ‘-‘- Jack Parker stopped trying to explain it weeks ago. He knew his team had a special quality, a will to win that could lead to unthinkable heroics. He knew his Terriers could score goals in a timely fashion, a trait that would serve them well in the direst of straits.

Saturday night at Verizon Center, the Boston University men’s hockey team dug deep into its bag of tricks for one last magic act. Trailing fourth-seeded Miami University by two goals in the waning moments of the NCAA title game, top-seeded BU responded by proving precisely why it will live forever in Terrier folklore.

With the national championship trophy all but handed to the underdog RedHawks, a team that played about as well as it possibly could in its bid to douse BU’s dream season, the Terriers gathered themselves just in time to snatch the coveted hardware from the grips of Miami. For a BU squad that had won each of the first six championships it played for this season, the seventh ‘-‘- and most important ‘-‘- would not go unclaimed.

‘We were just keeping our heads up,’ sophomore forward Nick Bonino said. ‘We’ve been on an even keel all year. We don’t get too high, and we don’t get too low. Everyone was getting held accountable. We knew what we had to do. We didn’t want to count ourselves out yet. The national championship was up for grabs. We weren’t going to stop until the last buzzer sounded.

‘We proved that we’re a resilient bunch. We were going to do everything we could to tie it up, and hopefully push it to overtime.’

When Bonino buried a slap shot off a slick pass from senior defenseman Matt Gilroy to tie the game at three with 17.4 seconds remaining in regulation, the only question left to be answered was when ‘-‘- not if ‘-‘- the Terriers would secure their fifth national title in program history. Teams that overflow with superior talent and effort usually win, but those that also benefit from great fortune almost always prevail.

‘With this team, I’ve never seen anything like this where it seems like we were getting a big goal here, a big goal there,’ Parker said. ‘It always seems like they’re always late. We’ve had that all year.’

In its final three games on the road to college hockey’s summit, BU faced significant obstacles ‘-‘- each more daunting than the last. First came its Northeast Regional final against the University of New Hampshire, a game that by all accounts should have marked the end of the Terriers’ storybook season. But the Wildcats, who dominated BU in the second and third periods of that fateful contest, saw their undeserved demise come in the form of an agonizing own goal credited to BU senior forward Jason Lawrence with 14.4 seconds left in regulation.

Then, saddled with a 4-3 deficit late in Thursday’s national semifinal against a University of Vermont team that has presented considerable problems for BU over the past two seasons, the Terriers rallied for a pair of goals in the final minutes to exorcise their UVM demons and advance to the title bout.

But with the program’s first NCAA championship in 14 years hanging in the balance Saturday, BU saved its best comeback of the season for the grandest stage in college hockey. Two inexplicable last-minute goals in a 42-second span pulled the Terriers even with the RedHawks, setting up sophomore defenseman Colby Cohen’s decisive slap shot that found its way into the Miami net and the BU history books.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘

‘I think the way we did it might have given Coach a heart attack, but I wouldn’t want it any other way,’ Gilroy said. ‘The dramatics of it ‘-‘- J-Lo scoring [against UNH], and then Thursday night was unbelievable. But what just happened now, I’m still in awe over it. It’s a great feeling.’