BOSTON — Five seconds before the merciful final buzzer, Jack Harvey arrived at the BU bench and snapped his stick over the door. It didn’t break cleanly at first — an inconvenience he’d probably lost the patience for over the previous half hour — so, he leaned over the boards, dropped his head and froze.
He eventually got up, pulled the stick in half and sank into a line of players waiting for the opportunity to leave their own rink.
The early-season boiling point for the Boston University men’s hockey team was not, as it turns out, North Dakota’s 7-2 rout of the Terriers last week in Grand Forks, N.D.
Instead — at least for now — it was a 5-1 loss to Michigan on Friday night at Agganis Arena, in which BU led after two periods, then decided it wasn’t interested in winning a hockey game anymore. The Terriers served 19 penalty minutes in the final frame. They conceded five goals. They brought a student section that purposely avoids cursing to a point where it couldn’t stop itself.
And when the final horn did sound, they swiftly removed themselves from an arena that was turning Maize and Blue, taking with them even more questions and zero answers.
“The positive,” Jay Pandolfo said postgame, “is that we play again tomorrow.”
The Terriers opened the scoring midway through the second period on a preposterous combination from freshmen Cole Hutson and Cole Eiserman, took it to the No. 11 Wolverines in the five minutes that followed, then utterly collapsed.
Michigan equalized early in the third period on a wrister from sophomore Evan Werner, who stood wide open in the circle, presumably because BU assistant captain Devin Kaplan had engaged in a shoving match at the other end of the ice. Less than two minutes later, off a BU turnover in its offensive zone, Werner fired home a one-timer on an odd-man rush to give the Wolverines the lead.
Three minutes after that, Eiserman took a slashing penalty after the whistle, and Michigan defenseman Ethan Edwards scored on the man-advantage. Suddenly trailing, 3-1, with less than 10 minutes to go, BU assistant captain Quinn Hutson proceeded to earn a five-minute major, and an ejection, for elbowing. Two minutes into that kill, Kaplan took yet another penalty, this one a minor for high-sticking. With three seconds left in the ensuing 5-on-3, Michigan captain Jacob Truscott made it 4-1.
“We’re playing losing hockey,” Pandolfo said.
The laundry list of concerns was far longer than a week prior at Ralph Engelstad Arena, when the Terriers got ran off the ice during a five-goal North Dakota first period in the series opener. The first period was again an issue on Friday — BU was outshot, 9-2, in the opening frame — but it somehow finished the very least of the Terriers’ problems.
“We got everything we deserved in that game,” Pandolfo said. “Everything.”
He didn’t even mention the slow start postgame, which had become a consistent theme in the Agganis Arena press room over the first four games of the season. Instead, he was asked about a stunning lack of third-period discipline perpetuated by two of his assistant captains.
“No question it’s a concern,” Pandolfo said incredulously. “Our leaders need to be better.”
The Terriers needed more from their vaunted offense, too, which was ultimately outshot, 35-23, and created few Grade-A chances. BU was disjointed on the rush, failing to effectively transition from defense to offense. When it did get to the offensive zone, it was outworked by Michigan’s defense. And save for Cole Hutson, who was again the Terriers’ most progressive skater, none of BU’s stars were particularly dangerous.
It was a disappointing showing against the toughest opponent Agganis has welcomed so far this season, and that’s excluding the third-period hoopla.
“I’m clearly not doing a good enough job with our group,” Pandolfo said. “I’ll take the responsibility for not doing a good enough job having our team prepared.”
He looked almost befuddled, unable to figure out why a team that started the season No. 3 in the nation was again its own worst enemy. After an impressive response in the series finale at North Dakota last Saturday, there was optimism the Terriers’ early season inconsistency was behind them.
The hope was extinguished in a hurry on Friday. The lazy start returned. The extreme lack of discipline, present in the season opener against Holy Cross but mostly gone since, crept back up on the Terriers and punched them in the mouth. And, deflatingly, Kaplan — who scored what felt like a cathartic goal in that 4-3 win over the Fighting Hawks — receded to the distracted nuisance he’d been to start his junior year.
“After the way we played and competed versus North Dakota and the way we practiced this week, I thought we were going to come out and play well,” Pandolfo said. “Clearly, I was mistaken.”
In the end, he left the press room again unsatisfied and again in search of a response. But not before he expressed a sentiment that is coming to define the BU men’s hockey team in 2024.
“It starts getting old,” Pandolfo concluded, “when you have to keep responding.”
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