Listen to the Boston University women’s hockey team talk about Saturday’s regular season finale against Connecticut, and you’d never know BU lost the game.
“We outplayed them,” head coach Tara Watchorn said postgame.
“We did a good job,” senior assistant captain Maggie Hanzel added.
“We were really happy with our play,” concluded graduate captain Tamara Giaquinto on Thursday.
Yes, the Terriers did lose — 3-1, with the Hockey East regular season title on the line — but BU has insisted missing out on its first No. 1 seed in 12 seasons doesn’t take away from the remarkable success it achieved this season. The Terriers (21-11-2, 18-7-2 HE) finished with 57 league points, the most in program history by a mile, and are still the second seed in the conference tournament, their highest placing since 2019-20.
“It’s not the end of the world,” Giaquinto said.
Besides, the hardware that matters most is the Hockey East tournament title, and No. 14 BU’s quest for it starts on Saturday, when it hosts eight-seed Vermont at Walter Brown Arena in the quarterfinal. And to that end, the Terriers feel they took plenty from the loss to UConn.
“We found our playoff game,” Watchorn said.
Against the defending conference champions, the Terriers outshot the Huskies 34-21, took 32 more total shot attempts, started the game strong after coming out flat in the team’s first two meetings and survived the neutral zone against UConn’s notorious 1-2-2 trap.
“Even though we lost,” Giaquinto said, “there were so many little things we looked at that we were happy with that we want to bring into playoffs.”
That’s big for Saturday, not just because UConn is Hockey East’s premier team, but because junior forward Sydney Healey noted that there are similarities between the way the Huskies play and the way Vermont does. The Catamounts are one of two teams in the bottom half of the league standings that beat BU this season — a 3-2 victory in Burlington in early January. The Terriers won the other two meetings, most recently a 4-1 decision at Walter Brown on Feb. 1.
Watchorn has said that Vermont wants to play in a “track meet,” a chaotic style of play that goes against BU’s goal of territorial advantage.
“They are a fast team, which we are aware of,” Healey said. “But, I mean, we played them three times this season, and UConn as well. I think they share those qualities of a hard forecheck and bringing that high-pressure situation in every area of the ice.”
The goal for the Terriers, then, is to dictate the pace of play themselves.
“It’s being willing to play ‘blue collar’ offense,” Watchorn said. “It’s solving problem No. 1 so you can get to No. 2 and No. 3, and eventually they lead to goals. But while you’re doing that, they don’t have the puck either. And I think that’s going to be the big thing. Not letting them build confidence with [the puck], because they’re fast, they can skate a 200-foot game, they can make you pay on the rush. I think just continuing to upgrade our puck dominance so we can control the game even more.”
The Terriers did those things well, even in a loss, against UConn last Saturday. They don’t have a choice but to do it again this Saturday.
Some notes on BU:
– Giaquinto, who finished the regular season with eight goals and nine assists in 34 games, won Hockey East Defender of the Year honors. Watchorn broke the news to her with a phone call before the award was announced on Wednesday.
“I literally had no response,” Giaquinto said. “It’s really hard to put into words what that meant to me.”
“Definitely a highlight for me in my coaching career,” Watchorn added. “Classic Tam, she was at a loss for words at the start, but she found them pretty quick.”
Giaquinto’s eight goals — six of them on the power play — and 17 points were both career-highs in her final season of college hockey. In her first three seasons at BU, she scored one goal and recorded 11 points; in her final two, she scored 13 and recorded 32.
“She didn’t change anything dramatic,” Watchorn said. “So much of that is mindset, belief in yourself, and patience.”
Some notes on Vermont:
– The Cats (9-24-2, 8-17-2 HE) defeated Holy Cross, 3-2 in overtime, in the first round of the Hockey East tournament on Wednesday. True to form, the game-winning goal came off a sudden rush from a forecheck in the neutral zone.
Though Vermont finished eighth in the league, they won four games against top-five conference opponents (including two against Northeastern), tied with fourth-seeded Providence twice and took UConn to overtime. It is a team that’s played strong opponents tough all year.
“Any team can beat any team in Hockey East,” Healey said. “I don’t think we’re going in looking at the rankings.”
At the same time, the Cats’ 1.4 goals per game are third-fewest in the country, their 11.7-percent power play is seventh-worst and their 77.2-percent penalty kill is ninth-worst. BU is better — miles better — in almost every meaningful statistical category.
“We know that we’re a really great team,” Giaquinto said, “and the game should go our way on Saturday.”
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