Saturday night, after a disappointing 4-1 home loss to the No. 12/13 University of New Hampshire, Boston University men’s hockey coach Jack Parker expressed disappointment in the leadership on his team.
‘We laid an egg tonight,’ Parker said after the game. ‘It’s obvious to me that on this team, leadership is lacking. Our juniors and our seniors had horrible nights tonight in general, and I’m worried about our freshman and sophomores thinking this is how we’re supposed to play.’
With the first Monday in February ‘-‘- and a Beanpot matchup with Northeastern University ‘-‘- looming just around the corner, the Terriers will welcome the No. 14/15 University of Massachusetts-Amherst to Agganis Arena Friday for a 7 p.m. contest.
With leadership lacking, there would figure to be concern about looking past UMass (15-9-0, 10-7-0 Hockey East) to the always highly anticipated Beanpot commencement.
Junior captain Kevin Shattenkirk said he and the Terriers (8-11-3, 6-9-2) know better.
‘We really don’t have the luxury of looking past anybody right now,’ Shattenkirk said. ‘It’s going to be a huge game for us.’
BU is currently tied for sixth with the No. 17 University of Vermont in Hockey East with 14 points, though the Terriers have played 17 conference games to UVM’s 15. Northeastern trails the Terriers by just one point with 17 games played, while Merrimack has ten points but only 14 games played. The Minutemen are in second place with 20 points through 17 games.
Perhaps the most telling trend of BU’s season has been their inability to win twice in the same weekend.
‘It’s obviously kind of been our Achilles’ heel this year ‘-‘- not being able to string two good games together,’ Shattenkirk said. ‘That’s what great teams do and successful teams do.’
On Saturday against UNH, Parker said he could tell his team wasn’t prepared to play just two minutes into the game. It wasn’t the first time Parker had seen a lack of readiness from his squad, and BU has failed to bounce back from lackluster first periods all season. The team is 0-8-3 when opponents get the opening goal, and 0-6-2 when trailing after the first stanza.
As far as Parker’s concerned, the responsibility for getting the team fired up before games falls squarely on the captains’ shoulders, and to this point, the captains have been inconsistent in fulfilling their end of the bargain.
‘He’s right ‘-‘- leadership needs to get a little better,’ junior assistant captain Nick Bonino said. ‘We’re doing what we can inside the locker room to try to fix that.’
‘It’s true ‘-‘- we obviously haven’t done our part in taking care of the team’s focus in those second games on the weekend,’ Shattenkirk said. ‘We’re kind of collaborating this week to work on ways to keep everyone focused and work on winning two games in one weekend, which we haven’t done yet this year.
‘It’s just a matter of ‘-‘- as one of my old coaches used to say, just having amnesia. You really have to forget about it. It was obviously a very emotional win against BC ‘-‘- a great win for us ‘-‘- but you really have to wake up the next day and completely erase that from your mind. It’s a tough thing to do but I think we really need to work on that more.’
The team held a meeting on Monday, and according to all parties involved, the results were overwhelmingly positive as both Parker and the players aired their concerns over the team’s outcomes to this point in the season.
With two big points against the Minutemen on the line, the Terriers are confident they’ll arrive at Agganis Friday night ready to battle for their Hockey East lives.
‘Guys know what they have to do,’ Bonino said. ‘They’re a team that’s fifth in the PairWise. It would help us a lot of we could win, so we’re just focusing on them.’
Game Notes:
UMass junior forward James Marcou currently leads the country with 39 points. His 31 assists are also best in the nation . . . Marcou’s linemate, sophomore Casey Wellman, is tied for seventh in the country with 33 points, and is tied for first nationally with 19 goals . . . Parker said that sophomore Kieran Millan would get the start in net for BU Friday. Parker added that he had yet to decide who would start for the Terriers in Monday’s Beanpot opener . . . The Terriers are 8-3-0 when scoring first, and 5-0-0 when leading after the first period in 2009-10.