STORRS, Conn. — Six minutes into the second period on Friday afternoon, Julia Shaunessy walked into the center of the bench and gave the Boston University women’s hockey team a piece of her mind. BU’s graduate assistant captain spoke with clear animation, then stepped back out of the huddle and shuffled back onto the ice alone.
Her body language seemed irritated, and it was hard to blame her. The No. 12 Terriers know they can play way better than they did in a 4-1 loss to Connecticut at Toscano Family Ice Forum.
“We were just tight,” head coach Tara Watchorn said postgame. “And then you get frustrated, and we weren’t living to our standards and creating the environment we needed.”
There is something about playing against UConn that, in its two matchups with the Huskies so far, BU hasn’t been able to move past. Watchorn said Wednesday the Terriers’ 3-1 loss to the defending Hockey East champions at Walter Brown Arena on Feb. 7 was about her team “being a little too hesitant,” and giving the opponent “too much respect.”
The pressure was even greater on Friday, with first-place BU knowing it needed to take only one game to overtime in the series with the Huskies to clinch its first conference regular season title in 12 seasons. But UConn is still UConn, and the Terriers also entered knowing that if they lost twice in regulation, the Huskies would steal the banner from their grasp.
“What an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we can handle stress, that we can perform when we want to win something,” Watchorn said before the series.
But postgame on Friday, she said BU was only “dipping our toe in the water.”
“It’s just consistently finding that balance between discipline and swagger, for lack of a better word,” she added. “We were playing our gameplan, but it was just not ‘all in,’ in terms of our confidence level.”
When Shaunessy took control of the huddle during that media timeout, BU was already down 2-0. The Terriers had sleepwalked through the game until that point; they failed to establish territory, they were dominated in the neutral zone and, on UConn’s first two goals, their play in the defensive zone collapsed.
At 6:58 of the first, Husky fourth-liner Sadie Hotles skated freely into the circle and fired a wrister past sophomore goalie Mari Pietersen. Three Terriers were in the area, but none of them checked to Hotles. The UConn freshman made it 2-0 less than three minutes into the second, this time with a wide-open shot from the slot off a feed from behind the goal. Moments earlier, BU had failed to clear the puck from the area around Pietersen’s net, even though multiple defenders were in position to do so.
BU briefly woke up after falling down by two goals, only for UConn sophomore Martha Mobarak to kill the Terriers for good at 9:06 of the second, when she skated into the slot and fired a one-timer into the bottom corner of Pietersen’s net. Again, multiple BU sweaters were in the area, but the Terriers couldn’t prevent UConn from getting a shot off.
Pietersen was promptly pulled. It was the first time she’s conceded three goals over her last five starts.
Senior Callie Shanahan replaced her, but she had no chance of keeping out UConn’s fourth, as senior captain Jada Habisch tapped in an easy look on an odd-skater rush late in the frame.
These were goals BU — which entered allowing 1.8 a game, sixth-fewest in the country — doesn’t normally concede. The Terriers just haven’t been able to find their identity in the first two periods against the Huskies (BU also went down 2-0 midway through the Feb. 7 matchup).
Watchorn was asked if it was because of what UConn was doing to her team, or what her team was not doing for itself.
“More of us not doing it ourselves,” she said. “We know the way that they play. We know that they’re gonna get pucks in deep, and we’re gonna do the same. And how do we take advantage of the moments they do break down, and how do we take advantage of the moments that we do earn?”
The problem is that BU hasn’t found all that much daylight over 120 minutes against the Huskies. Watchorn said after the first matchup that UConn plays a “1-2-2” defense in all three zones, which she said made it tough for her team to break out and transition into its offensive zone. The Terriers had the same struggles on Friday — even though Watchorn said there were moments when BU did a good job “exiting our [defensive] zone” — and a team that’s built its success on establishing territorial advantage didn’t have any in Storrs.
BU lost the battle for the neutral zone, and badly.
“They just sit people on that red line and they hit pucks in and they make you go back to work,” Watchorn said.
Whether or not all of this was because of self-inflicted wounds from a BU team that lacked confidence, or because UConn is simply a bad matchup for the Terriers, is the question. Watchorn certainly seemed to think the former, but even if that’s the case, BU doesn’t have any more time to waste. It needs to get over itself and play to its standard in Saturday’s series finale, when the pressure will be even higher. If the Terriers lose in regulation, the Hockey East regular season title they had three separate chances to clinch will slip from their fingers.
Watchorn was asked how she plans to prevent the pressure from getting to her players, who have operated with such belief and confidence all season long.
“Lean into it,” she said. “That’s a great problem to have. We’ve earned this opportunity, and it’s the age-old saying: Pressure is a privilege. Let’s just have fun with it.”
As for what she wants BU to do better against UConn — the only Hockey East team the Terriers haven’t defeated this season — Watchorn was even more frank.
“Believe that we can beat ‘em.”
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