BELFAST, Northern Ireland — After his team’s valiant 6-3 loss at Agganis Arena last Friday, Merrimack coach Scott Borek was asked if he was looking forward to a rematch with the Boston University men’s hockey team, one scheduled for exactly a week later in the first round of the Friendship Four.
“Not at all,” Borek said.
He was probably the only person in the building who walked away with praise for No. 13 BU’s performance. BU head coach Jay Pandolfo spent his media availability looking nothing short of miserable, lamenting that his Terriers once again played levels below their standard.
Yet in the midst of all that BU frustration, Borek raised an important point.
“We understand,” he said, “we’re playing one of the most talented rosters in the country.”
Seven days and 3,000 miles later, that reality was the difference at SSE Arena in Belfast. BU was again outshot by its lowly Hockey East rival — this time, 33-29 — but behind a ruthless first period, the Terriers downed the Warriors, 6-2, to advance to Saturday’s final. They’ll play Notre Dame or Harvard for a chance at their first trophy in two seasons.
First-round NHL draft pick Cole Eiserman and former Merrimack star Matt Copponi stole the victory back in Boston. But in Northern Ireland, it was sophomore defenders Aiden Celebrini and Gavin McCarthy and senior forward Tristan Amonte, three of BU’s least likely scorers, who potted three first-period goals with the Terriers’ first five shots on net. They put the game just far enough out of reach — despite Merrimack’s impressive play and BU’s continued inconsistency.
Once again, the Terriers were imperfect (and even outplayed, at times). But they were also potent and timely enough to make up for it.
“There’s times when we’re really good,” Pandolfo said postgame. “And there’s times where we get away from it.”
The good outweighed the bad, and that’s one of the boons for the back-to-back national semifinalists. They can get away with a lot.
Their opponents? Not so much. Merrimack (3-8-1, 2-5-1 Hockey East) learned that the hard way over this pseudo-series, a lesson punctuated by BU’s third goal in Belfast. The Warriors were on the power play, but when freshman forward Kamil Bednarik saw that the puck was dribbling towards a BU stick, he exploded down the ice. Copponi found him with a perfect pass, while McCarthy ran the ice on the opposite side. In a flash, BU (7-5-1, 4-2-1 HE) had a shorthanded Grade-A chance, one that McCarthy buried from the slot at 15:07.
“Just saw a spot to jump up,” McCarthy said.
His tally sent BU into the first intermission leading, 3-0, despite only recording seven shots on goal to Merrimack’s six. Celebrini had opened the scoring at 7:10 on a one-timer from the circle off an excellent feed from junior Devin Kaplan. Less than two minutes later, Amonte scored on a wrister from the slot, a chance created by a slicing, coast-to-coast carry from star freshman Cole Hutson.
In the opening frame, BU got three goals from a trio that had scored only four in a combined 155 career games.
“Wanted to catch the goalie off a little bit,” Celebrini said.
Ironically enough, he was central to BU’s struggles in the final two periods — the Terriers committed six penalties, and Celebrini was responsible for three of them. Discipline has been a problem throughout BU’s disappointing start.
“We talk about it,” Pandolfo said. “The message just isn’t getting through yet.”
“I can’t talk much, I had three today,” added Celebrini. “But it’s hockey. You’re playing hard, and there are some plays where you’ve got to know the game. We’ve been playing this game for so many years, so you got to know the intricacies of when to go, when not to go. For example, there was no need for me to take a penalty 200 feet from my own net.”
His accountability was refreshing for a team that has largely failed to improve so far this season. Also encouraging was BU’s penalty kill, which was airtight save for Merrimack’s opening goal at 13:57 of the second. Pandolfo wasn’t interested in praising it after the game, instead directing his attention at the six penalties, which he called “a problem.” And it was a problem, but also one that BU prevented from turning into a disaster.
Same goes for BU’s slow starts in each of the final two periods. The Terriers struggled in the second frame leading up to Merrimack’s first tally, but flipped a switch immediately after the concession. And in the third, when the Warriors cut the lead to one 21 seconds in, senior netminder Mathieu Caron (31 saves) responded with a bevy of impressive stops and junior Quinn Hutson scored to make it 4-2.
Amonte scored an empty-netter and sophomore captain Shane Lachance added another tally in the final two minutes to seal it.
“We’re a resilient team, our guys care and they take pride in the things that we need to do,” Pandolfo said. “Just sometimes, we need to get woken up.”
The very same problems had plagued the Terriers in Friday openers week in and week out, a trend that turned Pandolfo from angry early in the year to outright deflated last Friday.
“The start of the year hasn’t been good enough, we all know that, we’ve all accepted that,” Celebrini said.
The win was BU’s first on a Friday in over a month, a noticeable step forward even if there’s plenty still to take.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations,” Celebrini said. “We’ve got such a tight knit group that it can be a few minutes after practice [when] we just talk, and we’ve had some more in-depth meetings, and it’s been really positive.”
A lot more conversations will be required to get BU where it needs to be. But as Scott Borek can tell you, the Terriers have the talent to survive in the meantime.
Said Celebrini: “It’s been a great job from the leadership group, the coaches and all the boys in there to really sit down and figure out what’s going wrong, what we want to fix, and setting our sights on kind of creating a new chapter of this season.”
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