We don’t know what compelled Tara Watchorn to break up her third line of Sydney Healey, Alex Law and Lola Reid for the Boston University women’s hockey team’s road series with Syracuse. But whatever it was, a truth began to emerge during the Terriers’ sweep of the Orange.
Forget which line Lola Reid is playing on. The goals are coming regardless.
After potting thrice at Tennity Ice Pavilion, the star freshman is up to a Hockey East-leading six goals in her first nine games of college hockey.
And BU has needed them all.
Tied 1-1 late in the second period of a must-take-care-of-business game on Friday, Reid scored off rebounds on either side of the second intermission to pull BU away in a 4-1 victory. Then, leading, 2-1, midway through the third on Saturday afternoon, Reid calmly buried a critical insurance goal on an odd-skater rush to clinch a 3-2 win.
“She’s showing ya,” head coach Watchorn said postgame on Friday, “she’s got a knack for scoring.”
And behind her team-leading 11 points, the Terriers are 6-3. It’s the program’s best record over the first nine games of a season since 2014.
The sweep concluded a victory lap of a weekend for Watchorn, who made undeniably perplexing decisions on the line chart but, in the end, clearly pushed the right buttons.
There was the new fourth line of Reid, senior Ani Fitzgerald and freshman Kaileigh Quigg, excelling in both games. There was junior Clara Yuhn, who was moved up to the second line after a brutal start to the season, tattooing a slapshot from the circle to draw the Terriers level on Friday. There was Sydney Healey, top-shelving a wrister Saturday on the power play, a unit that’s struggled mightily this season. And there were also the changes Watchorn didn’t make, like in defense, where all three pairings stayed the same and Maeve Kelly scored her first career goal.
“It’s about time, to say the least,” Watchorn said of the junior’s tally on Friday.
That game started ugly — BU went into the first intermission trailing a 2-5 team — but it finished one of the Terriers’ most comprehensive wins to date, not just in their goal scoring but their mettle, too.
“Since that Northeastern loss on Friday (October 12th, BU’s last defeat), I feel like every weekend since we’ve been slowly building the ownership over the environment,” Watchorn said. “The players have been taking the lead. And I think where you’ve been seeing that the most is their ability to stay in the moment, stay present and solve problems.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she added, “if we have a great first shift or not.”
BU wasn’t much better early on Saturday, as Healey’s power-play goal opened the scoring a full 35 minutes into the game. Syracuse quickly responded at the end of that second frame, but early in the third, junior Riley Walsh scored on a wrister from the deep circle. Reid’s third tally of the weekend followed 10 minutes later, and a late Syracuse goal was nothing but a consolation.
“Every game we’re becoming more mature in how we handle close games like this,” assistant coach Megan Myers said postgame on Saturday. “We did a great job of being even-keeled, and the team really took over in the locker room, to change the messaging about what we needed to do better in the next period.”
Ultimately, it was probably all a bit tighter than they would’ve liked — BU still needed the third period in both games and only outshot the Orange for the series by nine — but the Terriers kept winning and Lola Reid kept scoring. For that, they head into a home-and-home with Providence sitting atop both the conference’s standings and its individual scoring leaderboard.
And that’s something BU women’s hockey hasn’t been able to say in quite some time.
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