From the FreeP: Opening draw

By Scott McLaughlin/DFP Staff

For the first 27 or so minutes of its home and conference opener, it appeared that the No. 10 Boston University men’s hockey team was going to ride the wave of momentum created by its Ice Breaker title to an easy win over the University of Massachusetts.

But then the wave crested and the Terriers (2-0-1, 0-0-1 Hockey East) got sucked under. The Minutemen (0-2-1, 0-0-1 HE) dominated the rest of the game, erased BU’s two-goal lead and forced a 2-2 tie.

“You’ve gotta give UMass a lot of credit for just hanging in there and playing hard throughout,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “We did not. We turned the puck over and played on the offensive side of the puck, thinking we were pretty good after 2-0. But then UMass got their bus legs away from them and they started skating.

“All of a sudden, we lost our poise and gave the puck away I don’t know how many times. The amount of turnovers we made was bizarre to me. I’ve seen it happen a lot. The team thinks they’re better than they are. You get up 2-0 and, ‘Whoa, we’re pretty good.’ And then we started playing very, very unthorough. And UMass started playing very, very thorough.”