It would’ve been easy for freshman forward Charlie Coyle to fall short of expectations in his first game as a Terrier. After all, being a local kid, a first-round NHL pick and the cousin of Boston University legend and NHL All-Star Tony Amonte induces quite a bit of pressure.
But Coyle didn’t just meet the bar set for him in BU’s 9-3 win over the University of Toronto on Saturday, he vaulted over it with ease. The Weymouth native prompted a shower of hats with three goals and an assist in his debut, netting tallies at even strength, on the power play and shorthanded.
“He’d make any coach look good, that’s for sure,” said BU acting head coach Mike Bavis. “You don’t see a guy come along very often with that kind of a package. You’re looking at a rare commodity in terms of being such a big, strong, well-balanced athlete with the type of skills that make you a great hockey player, which are hands and hockey sense. He’s certainly giving us a dimension that is gonna be hard to handle.”
Coyle showed off his skill set early and often. He won faceoffs (14 of 21 on the game). He battled down low and attacked the net. He threw his body around and absorbed hits like a sponge. He made clean, crisp passes both on the breakout and in the offensive zone.
It all paid off with 6:20 remaining in the first when he took a one-touch pass from junior linemate Chris Connolly and ripped it over Toronto goalie Andrew Martin’s left shoulder to tie the game at 2-2.
The 6-foot-2, 207-pound workout warrior was far from done. With just over seven minutes to go in the second, he found a Connolly centering pass that had bounced around in front and buried it while being hooked to the ice to make it 5-3 BU. Coyle completed the hat trick midway through the third when he followed up his own shot and eventually pulled the loose puck out of some skates and flicked it into an open net.
Throughout the game, the 2010 San Jose Sharks selection looked right at home centering the top line for the 14th-ranked team in the country. With Coyle’s brick-wall build as the pivot point and the speed and feistiness of Connolly and senior forward Joe Pereira as the flanks, that line combined for five goals, seven assists and a plus-10 rating.
“It was funny because we haven’t really worked on a whole lot,” Connolly said. “We’re missing a couple players, so it was just kind of thrown together this week and it just happened to work out well. Charlie’s a big, strong kid with a lot of skill. Joe’s fast and he grinds in the corners. We all kind of complement each other. It was kind of nice to see on the first night.”
How long that line stays intact remains to be seen as the returns of junior forward Corey Trivino and sophomore forward Alex Chiasson from suspensions will cause a bit of reshuffling at the top of the depth chart. But it’s clear that the trio could be a force to be reckoned with.
“Clearly, that’s coach [Jack] Parker’s department,” Bavis said about the possibility of the line staying together. “But I think it was tempting to see Charlie play with a kid likeChris Connolly and to get Joey Pereira in a position to play with our better players and really elevate him. . .I think that’s potentially gonna be a really good line for us.”
As for Coyle leaping over the expectations bar, at least one teammate is already raising it a little higher.
“He kind of reminds me a lot of [2009 Hobey Baker finalist and current NHL player] Colin Wilson when he was here, a big, strong kid with a lot of skill,” Connolly said. “We look for him to contribute a lot this year.”
No pressure, Charlie.
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