By Kevin Dillon/DFP Staff
CHESTNUT HILL — The Boston University men’s hockey team was finally on the attack. It had scored two goals in the final 10 minutes of the period to pull within one of No. 3/4 Boston College, and it was threatening to tie the game with the extra attacker on and less than a minute to go.
But just as it looked like the comeback would be complete, BC forward Johnny Gaudreau killed the comeback with one quick flick of the wrist.
“Some kind of chip shot turnaround backhand from the red line rolls into the net dead-center,” said BC coach Jerry York. “Like I said to him, if there were 10 pucks, looking at it, he would probably make four of them.”
The unlikely empty-netter proved to be the dagger to BU’s comeback in the 6-4 loss, which was the just the latest of comeback attempts to fall short for the Terriers. If there is any positive to be taken from the latest contest in this seven-game winless streak for BU, it is that it has continued to use strong third-period efforts to pull within a goal in the final minutes of its losses.
“Obviously you hate losing, but I thought we took a big step in the right direction tonight,” said BU coach David Quinn. “It actually started in the third period against [the University of] Maine. So hopefully we will get rewarded with a win and hopefully we can start creating a little bit of a snowball effect from a winning aspect kind of like how this losing aspect has kind of picked up the snowball effect.”
The third period against Maine that Quinn referenced was one in which the team was down 5-0 with only 12 minutes remaining in the game at Frozen Fenway. Three goals in less than seven minutes later, and suddenly the Maine lead was all the way down to two.
Just like against BC, however, the comeback was put to rest with a long empty-net goal — this time from defenseman Ben Hutton. The goal was from an even greater distance than Gaudreau’s empty-netter, as the puck was shot from right next to his own goal line. Maine sophomore Devin Shore added another empty-netter to make the final score look even more like a blowout a little more than a minute later.
Empty-net goals have been a problem for the Terriers as of late, as they have allowed five in their last five games. The empty-net goals do not happen if BU has a lead, but BU has not led in the third period since its last win on Nov. 30 against Cornell University.
To Quinn, the key to finishing the team’s comeback efforts is to stop falling behind by so much in the first place.
“If it’s 3-2 through the course of the third period, and you pull your goalie, I think there’s a little bit more of an opportunity,” Quinn said. “You see that in basketball a lot. A team’s got a 25-point lead, all of a sudden they whittle it down to seven or six, and then it’s just not — you don’t have enough gas in the tank.
“I think that might be happening to us a little bit, but not only did we make it 5-4, we had some chances to make it 5-5 without the goalie pulled.”
Perhaps BU will avoid falling behind early Saturday night against the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. For now though, these comebacks are showing that despite their losing streak and serious injury trouble, the Terriers left standing are not going down without a fight.
“We’ve got good character guys in the room,” Quinn said. “We have good leadership. We don’t stop. We get down 5-2 to that team and you can pack it in easily, and we made a game of it.”
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