The Boston University men’s hockey team added some depth to its defensive unit, as forward-turned-defenseman T.J. Ryan of the South Shore Kings has committed to BU as a walk-on. The Terrier Hockey Fan Blog was first to report the commitment.
Ryan, who returned to defense after playing a season at forward last year, recorded two goals and eight points in 43 games with the Kings this past season. He tallied two goals and two assists in 27 games as a forward in 2011-12.
T.J. is the son of former BU defenseman and current radio color commentator Tom Ryan, who shared a captaincy with his roommate, new head coach David Quinn, in 1987. Tom recorded 55 points in 146 games with the Terriers and helped lead the team to Beanpot and Hockey East championships in 1986.
The 5-foot-11, 180-pound Ryan will be the eighth member of BU’s freshman class of 2013. If none of the freshmen or incoming recruits leave, the Terriers will have 16 underclassmen on the roster at the start of next season.
Boston University men’s hockey captain Wade Megan has found a new place to play hockey, as he signed an amateur tryout contract with the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL Monday. The Rampage are the AHL affiliate of the Florida Panthers — the organization that drafted him in the fifth round in 2009.
“It is a pretty good feeling,” Megan said. “I haven’t gotten into it too much yet, but just being here is great and I’m excited to get started.”
The 6-foot-1, 190-pound left winger was second on the Terriers with 16 goals this season while leading the team with 140 shots on goal. Megan did not make First Team or Second Team Hockey East, but was given an honorable mention for his play. He ends his BU career with 49 goals and 34 assists in 151 games.
“I was happy that Wade Megan was my last captain, because he was a hell of a captain,” said BU coach Jack Parker after his team’s season ended in a loss in the Hockey East finals. “I’ve been blessed with a lot of those type of guys over my career here, over 40 years here. He was a terrific captain for us.”
Megan got the call from San Antonio Monday night and flew there Tuesday night before spending the day undergoing medical tests Wednesday. Now officially with the Rampage, he expects to play his first professional game Thursday night.
Part of the medical testing was to look at this shoulder, which had been injured in BU’s 6-0 loss to Denver on Dec. 29, 2012. However, Megan said he did not need to wear a brace for the end of the season with the Terriers and “it feels fine now.”
With 13 games remaining on San Antonio’s schedule and the team at the bottom of the South Division in the Western Conference, Megan said he is planning on using these last 13 games to help adapt himself to the AHL level.
“I’ve got a lot of things I want to work on,” Megan said. “I’m going to continue to do that. I’m just trying to stay as relaxed as possible right now and playing good hockey down the stretch here.”
Less than two months ago, Ben Rosen was facing Joey Diamond as an opponent when the Boston University men’s hockey team played the University of Maine. Now, as Rosen tries out for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers of the AHL, he’s rooming with Diamond, who signed with the Tigers this month and led Hockey East in penalty minutes this year.
Rosen has signed an amateur tryout contract with the Tigers, the New York Islanders’ AHL affiliate, and practiced with them for the first time today at 10 a.m. He and Diamond, both Long Island natives, knew each other from playing against each other before college.
“We kind of were rivals back then, and as we got older, we started to become more and more friendly, and actually, we’ve been friends ever since,” Rosen said on the phone from outside the hotel room the two are sharing. “So we would play Maine, and I would hate him when we would play them, but … he’s a great kid whenever you’re not playing against him, that’s for sure.”
Rosen said he’s received other offers from ECHL teams but wanted to give the Tigers, the only AHL team to make him an offer so far, a shot.
“My agent just said this was the quickest and the best offer we had, so I just took it right away,” Rosen said. “It was only a day or two after the season had ended.”
If the Tigers sign Rosen to a contract, he would be in the farm system of the NHL team closest to his home in Syosset, N.Y. Rosen also attended the Islanders’ draft camp in July 2011, so he has some familiarity with the organization.
“Even where the AHL team is, here in Bridgeport, I’m only an hour or so from my home on Long Island, so it’s definitely a huge factor,” Rosen said. “It’s close to Boston, it’s close to home in New York, and it’s a great opportunity.”
The 46-year-old Boston University alumnus, who served as Jack Parker’s associate head coach for five years before leaving after the 2009 national championship, was officially named the next BU men’s hockey coach Tuesday morning.
BU President Robert Brown, with Quinn and athletic director Mike Lynch his side, made the announcement in a news conference at the School of Management.
“Finding the next men’s hockey coach for Boston University was been a wonderful challenge,” Brown said. “David has the ability, the experience and the values that we hold at Boston University to lead this program going forward.”
Lynch reached out to Quinn March 12 — the day after Parker announced his retirement — and the process didn’t take long from there. Quinn flew into Boston early Monday morning to finalize the agreement.
“It’s great to be home,” Quinn said. “I’m a BU guy through and through.
“I can’t explain to you how excited I am, how happy I am, how proud I am to continue the legacy that Jack has built over the last 40 years.”
The hiring ends Quinn’s four-season hiatus from Commonwealth Avenue and starts his third stint as a Terrier, all of them in different roles.
Photos by Michelle Jay/DFP Staff
A former first-round NHL draft pick, Quinn played for three years under Parker, then co-captained the 1987-88 team he did not play for due to a rare blood disorder. He played professionally for two seasons before beginning his coaching career.
Quinn made stops at Northeastern University, the University of Nebraska-Omaha and with the U.S. National Development Program before returning to BU for the 2004-05 campaign.
After the Terriers won it all in 2009, Quinn coached the Lake Erie Monsters of the American Hockey League to a 115-94-27record in three seasons before taking an assistant coaching job with the Colorado Avalanche for this season. He will finish the season with the Avalanche before focusing full-time on BU.
Quinn is touted as a very good recruiter, and is widely credited with bringing in many of the players on BU’s most recent national championship team. He has long been seen as a potential replacement for Parker.
“When he hired me in ’04 — people talk,” Quinn said. “Jack’s age and my age, people made assumptions, and I certainly never made an assumption.
“I always thought in the back of my mind that college hockey is something I would be interested in going back to if the right job opened up,” Quinn continued. “I wasn’t going to come back to college hockey just for any job, and we certainly all know this just isn’t any job, and it certainly isn’t just any job to me.”
Parker, who was consulted throughout the hiring process, gave Quinn his full blessing.
“He brings a different perspective now since he has been away for a while,” Parker said. “He was one of three or four obvious guys. And then it came down to, ‘OK, all of these guys are great. Who is the best?’ David Quinn won that battle.”
The hiring came quicker than many expected, the announcement coming just three days after the conclusion of Parker’s 40th and final season, and the work will begin immediately.
Quinn planned on spending part of the day Tuesday on calling incoming recruits, as well as talking with juniors Matt Nieto and Garrett Noonan, both of whom could forgo their seniors seasons and sign with their NHL teams — the San Jose Sharks and Nashville Predators, respectively.
Whatever Nieto and Noonan decide, Quinn likes the squad BU has now. Although the status of associate head coach Mike Bavis and assistant coach Buddy Powers is up in the air, Quinn has worked with them before and said he is looking forward to doing so again.
“This isn’t broke[n],” Quinn said. “Usually when you become a head coach at a Division 1 program in any sport, usually it’s because the team is losing and there’s been a coaching change … We certainly have a lot of good players here.”
That Quinn got the job when he did was eerie, in a way. About a week before Parker announced his retirement, Quinn ran into three members of the 2009 team — Colin Wilson (Nashville Predators), Kevin Shattenkirk (St. Louis Blues) and Nick Bonino (Anaheim Ducks).
He said seeing those guys “magnified” the feelings he was having of wanting to get back into the college game.
“It really reminded me of what college hockey was all about,” Quinn said. “I’ve moved around an awful lot. I’m here for the long haul. No intention of going anywhere. I will not seek any other jobs. I’ve been a lot of different places, and it’s just good to be home.”
He’s not home quite yet, though. After meeting the team Tuesday afternoon, Quinn was catching a 6 p.m flight to Calgary, Alberta, to join the Avalanche.
Boston University is set to announce that David Quinn will succeed Jack Parker as the BU men’s hockey coach, according to a source. The athletic department will make it official at a news conference 11 a.m. Tuesday at a location to be determined.
The news comes just two days after Parker’s 40-year head coaching career at BU ended with a 1-0 loss to the University of Massachusetts-Lowell in the Hockey East championship game. Parker announced March 11 that this season would be his last on the Terrier bench.
Quinn, 46, who was a co-captain for Parker’s 1987-88 team, served as Parker’s associate head coach for five seasons, but left after the 2009 national championship to become the head coach of the Lake Erie Monsters (AHL).
Last June, Quinn joined the Colorado Avalanche as an assistant coach under Joe Sacco, another BU hockey alumnus.
The Cranston, R.I., native is highly regarded as a top-notch recruiter, and was long seen as a likely candidate to replace Parker whenever he decided to retire.
On March 15, athletic director Mike Lynch told The Daily Free Press that a committee, comprised in part by him, BU President Robert Brown and Provost Jean Morrison, would pick the next coach. Lynch indicated he was looking to move quickly.
The hiring of Quinn means associate head coach Mike Bavis, who replaced Quinn starting in the 2009-10 season and said March 11 he felt very qualified for the job, was passed over.
“I’m a little more uniquely positioned to deal with this,” Bavis said that afternoon. “As the last couple of years have shown, this is more than just a hockey job.”
The status of Bavis and assistant coach Buddy Powers moving forward is unclear.
The source also said the school “talked to” New York Rangers assistant coach Mike Sullivan and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins (AHL) head coach John Hynes, though how close either was to getting the job is also unclear.
MINNEAPOLIS – Minutes into the No. 2 Boston University women’s hockey team’s game against the undefeated and top-ranked University of Minnesota, junior forward Marie-Philip Poulin fell to the ground.
The co-captain and team leader in points had taken a puck to the kneecap after she tried to block a shot by Minnesota defenseman Megan Bozek. For several seconds, while play continued to whirl around her, Poulin attempted to push herself up off the ice to no avail.
Finally, the whistle blew. BU’s trainer rushed out onto the ice and crouched down over Poulin who continued to writhe in pain and struggle to get up. After a few more seconds Poulin’s teammates, sophomore defenseman Caroline Campbell and senior defenseman Kathryn Miller, helped her get to the bench, where she proceeded to go down the tunnel.
“It’s a part of the game,” Poulin said in the press conference after BU’s 6-3 loss to Minnesota (41-0-0) Sunday night in Minneapolis.
What is not always part of the game, however, is a return to the ice, or, in Poulin’s case, having a huge impact on the game once you get out there.
By Meredith Perri/DFP Staff MINNEAPOLIS – After situating themselves in a room full of reporters after the NCAA title game on Sunday, Boston University women’s hockey captains Marie-Philip Poulin and Jill Cardella let their emotions show. With her face red, Poulin dabbed at her eyes and took a deep breath. Cardella, who just played her last game in a Terrier uniform, bit her bottom lip.
For the second time in three years, these two players were on the losing end of a national championship game.
This time around, the loss came to an undefeated University of Minnesota — the first women’s hockey team in NCAA history to go undefeated in a season.
“I guess today you saw a record-breaking team play another great hockey game,” said BU coach Brian Durocher. “I tip my cap to them.”
After three periods of trying to fight back into a game they never led, BU (28-6-3, 18-2-1 Hockey East) fell to the Gophers (41-0-0) 6-3 at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis.
