BOSTON — In the bowels of Agganis Arena late Saturday night, a question was asked about an 18-year-old named Cole.
Jay Pandolfo answered. He said things like “it doesn’t take long to see what type of player he is,” and “makes a play every time he’s got the puck at his stick,” and “may remind us of someone else that was here in the past,” that last part a pretty poignant comment around here. He smirked through a lot of it. For a notoriously straight-faced head coach, he seemed rather excited. And, this much we know for sure, he knew which Cole he was talking about.
No one else in the press room did.
This was in part due to the reporter failing to specify a last name. But it was also because, after the debuts of Cole Eiserman and Cole Hutson, Pandolfo’s heap of praise applied to each of them just the same.
So for anyone covering BU’s 5-2 season-opening win over Holy Cross, the quote was unusable.
And with that funky little quirk only this thriving bluebood program could produce, Boston University men’s hockey entered the Cole World.
If there was any doubt, it was snuffed in a hurry: the era to follow the unforgettable Macklin Celebrini-Lane Hutson show belongs to Cole Eiserman and Cole Hutson. Both freshman phenoms didn’t even play that well by their standards Saturday, and still, the reality was loud and clear: The Coles were the two most talented players on the ice.
They just did things differently out there. Eiserman’s first collegiate goal was difficult to even process in real time — there was a vague clank off iron and a goaltender reaching out to somewhere, but really, there was just a pass to Eiserman, a roar from the sold-out crowd seconds later, and whatever happened in between. A few minutes later, Holy Cross turned it over in the offensive zone, which feels like the kind of routine mistake that will be extra costly against these Terriers. Hutson sprang forward, and Shane Lachance found the freshman defenseman in stride on the right wing. After floating past an opponent in space, BU’s youngest Hutson brother went five hole like it was nothing.
He punctuated his first tally in scarlet and white with the very same celebration Eiserman had whipped out moments earlier, a devious shimmy-shake toward the BU bench.
“‘Eisy’ had a pretty stupid celly,” Hutson quipped after the game.
It all felt so remarkably similar to a year ago, when Macklin Celebrini, the NHL’s No. 1 overall pick, and Lane Hutson, probably the most dangerous defenseman in the country, lit up Agganis Arena night in and night out. Unlike those two, Eiserman and Hutson weren’t on the ice at the same time in five-on-five — at least not yet — but the driving forces behind BU’s attack were the same. An ultra-talented freshman forward scored a goal few others can score. And a defenseman called Hutson created chance after chance for himself or his teammates.
Cole Hutson finished with six shots on goal, tied-most on either team, and should’ve had an assist — his coast-to-coast skate into a perfect centering pass at 14:48 of the first was fired just wide by junior co-captain Ryan Greene.
“It’s just really fun,” Hutson concluded of his first college hockey experience.
And none of this is to say that Eiserman and Hutson are already at the level of the two that came before them. Eiserman, in a not-so-small screw up late in the second period, was ejected for contact to the head after the whistle. In the third period, Hutson tried to do too much in BU’s own zone — the type of mistake his brother excelled at avoiding — and his turnover led directly to a Holy Cross goal.
“We got a little sloppy at times,” Pandolfo conceded.
None of this is even to say that Eiserman and Hutson will reach Celebrini and Lane Hutson’s heights at all. To do that, they would need a combined (deep breath): 159 more points, two Hockey East Rookie of the Year awards, a Hockey East Player of the Year award, a Hockey East Tournament MVP and a Hobey Baker Award. Good luck.
But the feeling was the feeling on Saturday. And it did not feel like there was a pine for a Mack or a Lane at any point.
For the record — there are differences between Celebrini and Eiserman and Lane and Cole Hutson. Pandolfo spoke of a smoothness to Cole Hutson’s game and a busy-ness to Lane’s before the season, and that checked out upon first look at Cole. But between the two brothers, the end result tends to be the same. “We’re certainly going to miss Lane,” Pandolfo said then. “But I think Cole is going to come in and hopefully do a lot of what Lane did for us.”
The gulf between Eiserman and Celebrini is bigger: Eiserman isn’t the playmaker his predecessor was — the reason he went 19 picks after him in the Draft — and critics lament that he lacks a 200-foot game. But as a pure goalscorer, Eiserman may be even better. His first goal came on the man-advantage from the circle — Celebrini’s old wheelhouse — and when Eiserman drifted into that space Saturday, then demolished a slapshot past everybody, you couldn’t avoid the shades of No. 71.
Seriously. Watch this Celebrini goal from a year ago.
Now watch Eiserman’s from Saturday.
That’s uncanny.
Again. This was one game against Holy Cross. What felt true before the season is probably still true now: You don’t just replace Macklin Celebrini and Lane Hutson.
But in this Cole World, BU might get pretty damn close.
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