Unappetizing

“We weren’t ready to play.” “We weren’t hungry enough.” “We didn’t want it.”

Those were three of No. 20 Boston University men’s hockey coach Jack Parker’s most-used phrases in postgame press conferences this season. On any given night, there was a chance the Terriers were going to come out totally flat and have their opponent skate circles around them for 10, 20, maybe even a full 60 minutes.

It was only fitting that a molasses-slow start was exactly what doomed BU in its final game of the season, a 5-2 loss to the No. 19 University of Maine on Friday night in the Hockey East semifinals. At the end of the first period, the scoreboard read 2-0 Maine with shots favoring the Black Bears 18-5.

“Before the game,” Parker said, “I said to Buddy Powers, my assistant coach, “It’s awfully casual in there. They don’t look like they’re ready to play.’ Ordinarily, I would say I’d be flabbergasted if a BU hockey team wasn’t ready to play for one game to get to the finals, to get to the national tournament. But not this team. I’m not surprised. This has been a long season with that type of stuff.”

Only a month ago, the Terriers dominated the Black Bears in every facet of the game while sweeping a weekend series at Agganis Arena. BU outscored Maine 12-6 on the weekend.

Everyone knew the Black Bears were going to bring a better effort Friday night, though &- Parker and captains Kevin Shattenkirk and Eric Gryba all said as much after Wednesday’s practice. Yet for some reason, the Terriers were still surprised by how Maine came out of the gates.

“We weren’t ready for how well Maine was playing,” Shattenkirk said. “We didn’t match their intensity. We lost all of our battles.

“It seemed like we went out there and we were back on our heels from the beginning of the game. It seemed like they really came at us and we weren’t expecting them to.”

The Terriers also continued another season-long bad habit in the first period: racking up penalties. BU went to the sin bin three times in the period’s final 11 minutes. Maine was able to score less than a minute after sophomore goalie Kieran Millan’s tripping penalty expired, and then found the back of the net again while junior defenseman Colby Cohen was off for interference.

The Terriers took nine penalties total in the game, giving the Black Bears’ top-ranked power play eight chances, two of which they converted for goals.

“We’ve been talking about that all year,” Parker said. “We just couldn’t get it out of our game. It was not just this evening that we took a lot of stupid penalties. We’ve taken a lot of bad penalties this year.

“The best power play in the nation, and we take a third of the game off killing penalties. It’s insanity. A good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We did the same thing over and over again all year long.”

The game should’ve been an up-tempo, back-and-forth track meet between two teams that like to stretch the ice. It should’ve had fans on the edge of their seats all night, much like Boston College’s 7-6 overtime victory against Maine in Saturday’s championship game did.

Instead, the Terriers came out with their tails between their legs and played dead in the first period. The only BU fans on the edge of their seats after 20 minutes were those who had slid down their plastic seat backs while napping.

“I thought it would be a real fast game,” Parker said. “I thought both teams would come out flying. One of them did.”