After weathering 3:21 of 5-on-3 power play action tilted in the favor of the No. 9 Boston University men’s hockey team, Providence College clung to a 1-0 deficit inside Agganis Arena Friday night with 9:59 left to play in the final period.
The Friars (3-8-1, 2-5-1 Hockey East) had just killed off a 5-minute major penalty, along with a simultaneous minor slashing penalty that should have sealed the Terriers’ first win since Oct. 21.
Instead, the Terriers (3-2-4, 3-2-3) mustered just four shots before the Friars returned to even strength.
BU narrowly survived a final five minutes that saw Providence pepper BU goalie John Curry (22 saves) and the Terrier defense with shots from all over the zone. But finally the buzzer sounded, signaling the 1-0 Terrier win and the team’s first shutout of the 2006-07 season.
“The third period I thought we went out and played well,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “I thought we played pretty smart for the rest of the game until a couple of plays at the end. But in general we played pretty hard all night long.
“I liked our effort, I liked our legs. I don’t like the fact that we’re not scoring on the power play and we’re not scoring, period,” Parker continued. “But when you’re not scoring, it’s nice to have John Curry there so you can win 1-0.”
The Terriers were outshot by the Friars, 22-20, mostly due to a paltry trio of shots on goal BU tallied in the second period. But in terms of offense, Friday was the same old story for a Terrier squad that has just nine goals in 54 tries: a crippled power play. In the 17 minutes the Friars spent down at least one skater, BU mustered just six total shots-none of them able to light the lamp.
“I think we’re in a hurry,” Parker said. “We’re not patient. It’s so easy to do to get it set up the way you want it. The second one, when we got the 5-minute major and then the 5-on-3, that one we butchered. We played OK on the 5-on-4s, but the first power plays we got in the first period was unbelievable how bad we looked. It looked like we had never been out there together before in our lives.
“I think we’re just so anxious to score goals now,” he added. “[We think] ‘We gotta get one on the power play, we gotta get one on the 5-on-3.’ One of our John Wooden statements we always like to use is ‘be quick but not in a hurry.’ We’re in too much of a hurry, especially on the power play.”
Fortunately for the Terriers, one goal-a tally from sophomore center Chris Higgins just 3:19 into the third frame-would suffice to boost BU back in the win column and above .500, while the team tries to solve its snake-bitten offense.
“This has happened the last two years and so that’s the reason I’m really not concerned,” Curry said. “The guys are working hard and we’re getting better. It may not show a lot on the scoreboard or even the win column, but we’re getting better and the goals will come.”
The goal that came Friday was Higgins’s fourth, tying him with junior Pete MacArthur as the team’s second-highest scorer. (Kenny Roche leads the team with five.) Just 12 seconds after the first of a trio of third-period Friar penalties expired, Roche took a shot on net from the top of the zone. The puck slid across to the post on the rebound, where Higgins was waiting to pound it home past Providence netminder Tyler Sims’s (19 saves) leg.
“We were working the power play pretty good, and then right at the end of the power play Rochey curled up with it up at the blue line,” Higgins said. “He looked like he was gonna pass it across and he saw a guy try to come in, so he took a pretty good shot right on net. I just was lucky-right place at the right time. I just buried the rebound.”
It was the second frame that was the cause of concern throughout the arena Friday night, when the Terriers registered just three shots on goal to the Friars’ 10. Providence capitalized as BU’s all-important poise and composure began to slip away.
“I think we had 12 shots [attempted] in the first period and we had 26 in the second, which is more to the things that we want to do,” said Friar coach Tim Army.
“You’re gonna get outshot when you only get three shots in one period, and that’s all we did in the second,” Parker said. “That period killed us in a lot of ways, but we survived it.”
And after the second intermission, BU came out to reclaim both the physical and territorial advantage in the third, thanks in great part to Providence’s almost consecutive penalties.
“We got plenty of time in their zone,” said Parker. “But we shot the puck wide a lot tonight.”
Another problem the Terriers must work out to get back on the winning trend is their ability to finish.
“We had plenty of chances tonight. We had traffic there [in front of the net], we just didn’t put it by them,” Parker said. “Maybe we’re jumpy, maybe we’re saying, ‘Oh, we gotta get in it.’ But there were times when it looked like for sure it was going in.
“Give Sims credit,” Parker continued. “He made some big saves and stood tall, the defense played hard in front of him. But I really thought we kind of gagged on a couple we could have put in.”
Those errors turned the post-win atmosphere rather somber for both Parker and his players. Despite the win, the Terriers are nowhere close to satisfied.
“It’s a big win. It’s huge-it’s two points,” MacArthur said. “You don’t realize how big the points are until the end of the year comes around.
“It’s a relief,” he added, “but we need to put a pounding on somebody.”