By Tim Healey/DFP Staff
After all that, the Boston University men’s hockey team is hosting a Hockey East quarterfinal series.
The No. 19 Terriers (18-15-2, 15-10-2 Hockey East) handled Northeastern University, 5-0, Saturday night at Agganis Arena. With a little help from UMass-Lowell, which beat Providence 4-1, BU nabbed the third seed in the league tournament and will play Merrimack at Agganis next week.
Here’s a look at what went right (a lot) and what went wrong (a little) against the Huskies (9-21-4, 5-18-4 Hockey East).
Three up
Finishing hot — and happy
To paraphrase junior forward Sahir Gill, if you told BU a month ago it would finish third in the conference, it would’ve taken that in a heartbeat.
The team’s well-documented struggles in the second semester are a bit easier to swallow now that they finished with four wins in the last five games, taking eight out of 10 points and sneaking into the top four in the process.
During the midst of BU’s slump coach Jack Parker mentioned there was something wrong with the locker room — nothing in particular, maybe, but some sort of tension or stressor. Losing will do that to a team.
Now, though, seems to be different.
“We played more of a team game,” Gill said of the difference between this weekend and two earlier losses to Northeastern. “At times this year we had a tough streak after Christmas I think, maybe guys were maybe pulling in different directions.
“Everyone thought it had to be them or it was one individual that was going to get us a win, but I think the best that we play is when we’re as a team, and I think tonight and this weekend you saw a lot of [that].”
Sahir Gill’s pair of goals
Gill is a distant sixth among BU’s top-six forwards in terms of scoring, but with a pair of goals in the third period Saturday he climbs to a respectable 20 points (nine goals, 11 assists) on the season. He also has four points his last three games.
Gill said he felt “a little relief” to net a pair, adding that everyone’s going to need to contribute in the playoffs with the Terriers having exactly zero healthy scratches.
He also mentioned a conversation between he and Parker during which the coach told him to pick it up effort-wise.
“The points haven’t been coming but it can get frustrating at times but you don’t want to be a distraction that way. You want to keep playing hard. You don’t want to be a liability,” Gill said. “The quote I like to refer to is, ‘If it’s not working, you’re not working hard enough.’
“I don’t think [Parker] was happy with my effort, and I agreed with him, that’s just something I kind of wanted to go in this two games this weekend was just really focus on working hard first and not worrying about the points and sometimes that’s just they way it goes.”
Sean Maguire’s third shutout of the season
The freshman netminder has now started four games in a row — the first time a BU goalie has done so all season — and discounting the game in which he found out he was starting just hours before, he has played very well.
With 26 saves Saturday night, Maguire improved his save percentage to .919 and goals-against average to 2.72.
More important than the numbers, though, is his confidence headed into the postseason. He and the team know he will be in net every night, and although he didn’t exactly have to stand on his head to whitewash the Huskies, another shutout can only improve everyone’s level of comfort in the Pittsburgh Penguins prospect.
“It’s nice to see guys blocking shots with a minute left, two minutes left to get that shutout for him,” Gill said. “For him going forward, that’s probably huge.”
Honorable mentions: Danny O’Regan (one goal, two assists), Matt Ronan (first career point, an assist), special teams (two power-play goals, 4-for-4 on the penalty kill).
The second period
After BU steadily controlled play throughout the first, outshooting Northeastern 11-2, the Huskies flipped the script a bit the next 20 minutes.
The Huskies ended up with a slight 10-9 shots on net advantage, but the disparity in momentum was bigger.
The change from the opening frame to the middle one didn’t escape Parker.
“They outplayed us in the second period,” Parker said. “We were waiting for something bad to happen, it looked like, and then we came out and got the goal right off the bat in the third, and that kind of took the pressure off.”
Lack of depth
It wasn’t an issue this game, but hey, it’s hard to find “downs” in a 5-0 win, especially when the win is a team’s fourth in five games.
With junior assistant captain Garrett Noonan suffering a badly separated shoulder in the first game of the weekend, BU has exactly as many healthy scratches as Jake Moscatel had career goals before Friday night: zero.
The injury forced junior walk-on Matt Ronan into action for the third time this season and his fifth as a Terrier. He didn’t play poorly Saturday — he even assisted Gill’s second goal — but he also didn’t play a whole lot, by design.
Sooner or later rolling five defensemen for most of the game will likely come back to hurt BU, if only via fatigue.
It’s no one’s fault Noonan got hurt. Each team runs into its fair share of injuries as a season progresses.
The Terriers just happened to have theirs at the worst possible time.
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