What happened Monday is now a distant, but pleasant, memory for the Boston University hockey team.
After winning the Beanpot with a 5-3 win over Northeastern University earlier in the week, BU now faces another tough test this weekend when it takes on the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the No. 12 team in the nation.
“I think that this week in practice everyone seemed pretty focused on Lowell,” said junior defenseman Freddy Meyer. “These two games are huge for us in the league.”
The Icedogs (19-7-2, 11-5-2 Hockey East) currently sit in second place in Hockey East, three points behind the University of New Hampshire and three points ahead of the fourth-placed River Hawks (17-8-3, 9-6-3 Hockey East).
BU is riding a five-game winning streak, while Lowell has struggled mightily of late, going just 1-5-2 in its last eight contests.
The biggest reason for Lowell’s struggles has been the loss of three players to the French national team for the preliminary rounds of the Olympic Hockey tournament. Forwards Yorick Treille and Laurent Meunier and defenseman Baptiste Amar have been playing for France instead of Lowell since a Jan. 28 exhibition game, and most of the struggles have come since their departure. With France’s elimination from the Olympics, the three stars may be returning as early as Saturday, although BU would be just as happy to see the shorthanded version of the River Hawks.
“I think the Olympians obviously play a huge part on their team, so we obviously like to see them not come back,” Meyer said. “But I think they’ll be back on Saturday, so we’ll just have to be a little extra ready for them.”
The Icedogs will look to continue a recent trend that has defied one of their main season-long struggles. In each of its last two games, BU has notched two power play goals, this after having head coach Jack Parker note that his team looked more shaky on the power play than it did at even strength or shorthanded.
“We have really been working on it a lot in practice and I think guys are starting to get some more confidence on the power play,” Meyer said. “We’re starting to get a few more goals lately. The main key is to have the puck do the work and have a lot of pucks get to the net.”
Meyer is looking for the team to do the same thing to beat UMass-Lowell’s senior goaltender, Cam McCormick. Despite coming into the year as the backup, McCormick won the job in convincing fashion with his early season performance, and he hasn’t looked back. With a 12-4-3 record, a 1.54 goals-against-average and a .932 save percentage, McCormick has gone from number two on his team to a Hobey Baker candidate in the span of a couple of months.
“We haven’t really planned anything different in practice. We just want to get as many shots as we can on him and hopefully the bounces go our way and some slip by him,” Meyer said.
While McCormick poses a daunting challenge, BU is currently riding the high of winning its 24th Beanpot, recapturing a title it has lost for only a year. The Icedogs will look to ride that wave of success into this hugely important weekend in Hockey East.
“I think everyone on the team is pretty pumped up right now,” Meyer said. “We’ve had a couple of pretty big wins lately and we know that Lowell has beat us the last four times we’ve played them, so we’re hoping we have a lot of success against them.”
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