By Tim Healey/DFP Staff
The nerves — be it of the excited or anxious variety — were evident from the start, but they didn’t last long.
“I have a little bit of jitters,” Maguire said. “At the beginning of every game I’m a little fired up, I guess. But as soon as I get that first shot I’m just calm, collected — at least, I try to be — and I let things flow.”
It’s Maguire’s second shutout in a row and fourth of the season.
“He played real well,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “He stepped it up since he knew he was the guy [when Matt O’Connor got hurt] . . . Now that he knows it’s there, he’s probably more mentally prepared to play the second game.”
Maguire played well throughout the game, but made a couple big stops in the first, even though it was the frame in which he saw the fewest shots (seven).
One of them came with about six minutes remaining and Merrimack defenseman Justin Mansfield on the left side. Mansfield fired from the circle and Maguire, who nearly slid too far to his right, barely made the glove save to keep the game scoreless.
From Parker’s perspective, that wasn’t Maguire’s biggest. The soon-to-be-retired coach recalled one shot from Merrimack defenseman Kyle Bigos mid-way through the second period.
“I don’t think he even saw it until the very end and then he made a great save,” Parker said.
Maguire had a slightly different version. He didn’t see the shot, but he certainly felt it.
“It hit me right in the nuts. It actually hit me in the nuts. It was a stinger,” Maguire said. “I didn’t see it at all. I try to get to the top of my crease and be as big as possible. Luckily it hit me. I just sat on it.”
To be sure, Maguire certainly had a lot of help. The defensemen, which without junior assistant captain Garrett Noonan is mostly the top five while junior Matt Ronan spots a shift here and there, kept the Warriors to the perimeter for most of the game.
Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy, a man of few words each of the last two times BU handily topped his team, called Maguire “comfortable” but also said his team too often took “the path of least resistance” — it hesitated when trying to penetrate BU’s zone.
The visitors finished with just six Grade-A chances: two in the first, zero in the second and four in the third.
And that’s just the way Maguire likes it.
“Getting those long shots gets me actually into more of a rhythm,” Maguire said. “Gets those easy saves. It shows the boys I’m ready to go, and the rebound control, getting those shots into the corners and freezing the puck so the guys can change. I like the way our D has been playing these days, getting in front of pucks and making them shoot long.”
All the work Maguire put in in his own end, and he nearly outscored the Warriors on his own.
With less than a minute the clock and the Merrimack net empty during its own power play, Maguire corralled the puck in the crease and cleared it — straight up the middle.
So was he trying to score?
“Oh yeah,” Maguire said quickly. “When I saw that empty net, I told the ref right to my left, ‘I’m going to shoot this puck and try to score a goal.’ It’s a free shot on net on the penalty kill, so it’s not going to be an icing. May as well try.”
Normally I would say scoring the empty net goal was unnecessary at the very end of Game 2, but The fact that it was one Wade Megan scoring on a beauty of a crazed angle in his last seconds on the Agganis ice was poetic in that his very last seconds with the time hitting zeros was spent face down in ice as his impossible angle skidded into the unmanned net for what ultimately turned out to be his 50TH goal of his career as Californian Mattie Nieto had gotten his 100th point earlier in the evening.
BU will skate against The Eagles of Boston College in the 2/3 matchup – the late matchup in all likelihood in the semis at the Garden on Friday as the Champs get to select what time they play and for simple body recovery reasons you gotta think UML will pick the early matchup for the 1/4 semi v either PVD or UNH.
This is a far different team than the team that faced BC last in early December, the last time the 2 teams skated against one another.
I am glad we swept em, but the crazy thing is it would have helped us more if we beat em in three because by hitting Merrimack with 2 straight losses they fall out of being a Team Under Consideration and thus we lose our 10 9 & 1 TuC record coming in which had we gone 3 would have gone to 12 10 & 1 and instead they fall out of TuC and out TuC record now becomes 7 9 & 1 because Merrimack does not count any longer.
Yes it is frustrating but the truth is our two losses to Harvard REALLY hurt us as a PWR Tiebreaker ERGO the only way we likely were gonna make the tourney anyhow is by winning HE playoff title. This just makes us focus on the fact that we now have no way to back door or plan B in terms of getting into the Tourney.
In theory I like the PWR (Better than politicking, but things like that for us — and for instance PVD went on road this year and played four — 2 at Minn St and 2 at Miami (OH) — and PVD went to OT in 3 of those 4 road games yet only scratched one pt out of those four games. So each is an example of arbitrary and competition getting penalized, yet I still like PWR better than any alternative.
While I’m glad that you pointed out that Maguire is not still during the national anthem, he does visualization drills during the anthem at every game in which he starts. It is completely infuriating and incredibly disrespectful. I wish the observation wasn’t just put tossed under the rug as an aside in this article. There is plenty of pre-game practice time and that is when you drill. The anthem isn’t the time. I’m glad Maguire seems less nervous in the net as the season progressed, let’s see if he can also learn to be more mature and professional during the pre-game ceremonies at the garden.