One year later, two teams met in similar situations. One was an underachieving, underperforming disappointment, wondering what happened with its lost season. The other had defied its critics and risen to a high seed in Hockey East, despite being picked to finish much lower at season’s beginning. Just like last year, the better team won, despite some goaltending heroics from the loser.
Same teams, different story, as the Boston University hockey team swept Providence College this weekend to advance to the Hockey East semifinals. The win exorcised the demons of last year, when, despite great goaltending from then-freshman Sean Fields, the Icedogs fell to the Friars in three games, ending a disastrous 2000-01 campaign.
This year, it was Providence’s Nolan Schaefer who stood on his head in two games, coming out the loser twice. On Saturday night, Schaefer made 44 saves but was unable to stop four shots. On Friday Schaefer stopped 37 shots. All in all, the junior made 81 saves on 88 shots. Contrast that with Fields’ work, saving 50-of-54 shots, and you see one very good goalie with basically no support in front of him, and one very good goalie with an excellent defense in front of him.
“I think it was almost the exact same thing last year,” Terrier coach Jack Parker said. “We were picked to finish real high in the standings — we were picked to be third or second — and we ended up sixth. They weren’t picked to be very high, and they wound up third.”
And this year, BU was predicted to not even earn home advantage with a fifth-place finish, while Providence was picked to win the conference. Instead, the Friars struggled their way to a 13-20-5 record, eerily similar to BU’s 2000-01 season-ending record of 14-20-3. Providence finished last season 22-13-5, while BU has already bested that, with a 25-8-3 record up to this point.
The differences with the programs historically however, are many. While BU is one of the most successful college hockey programs in the sport’s history, Providence has experienced sporadic success. While Providence seemed possessed last year, BU has taken that attitude this year, and it has done its best to live up to the reputation of Terrier hockey.
“I think they were a team on a mission last year, and we were a team wondering what happened to us,” Parker said. “I think it’s the opposite this year: We’re a team on a mission, trying to get back to where we think we should be and erase the memories of a bad-attitude year last year.”
Count Providence coach Paul Pooley as an observer of that theory. Parker’s statements echoed his earlier words on the reverse theory. He saw a much different BU team than the one that finished sixth in the league and well out of the tournament the previous year.
Pooley’s co-captain, junior Devin Rask, also noted that his young team — of the six defensemen dressed for the Friars Saturday night, five were sophomores and freshmen, and one of the second-year men, Regan Kelly, arguably the best blue-liner of the bunch, went out of the game in the second period with a shoulder injury — needs to “learn to win.”
His coach agreed with those statements, and while the future looks bright for the Friars, the present is clearly Terriers time.
BU will face the University of Maine on Friday night at 7 p.m. at the FleetCenter, and according to Saturday’s two-third-period-goals-hero, sophomore forward Kenny Magowan, the Icedogs are very much looking forward to facing a team that swooped into Boston and came a Mike Pandolfo goal away from claiming second-place in the conference, not to mention a humiliating and bizarre 9-6 thrashing on Friday, March 1.
“They gave us a beating that last weekend, and we’ve got some unfinished business to take care of,” Magowan said. “I’m looking forward to playing them again. They’re a good team.”
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