Cristina Romano
With the Boston University men’s hockey team trailing by a goal at the first intermission on Saturday night, Gavin McCarthy spoke to the Agganis Arena rinkside reporter outside BU’s locker room. His evaluation of a frustrating first period would be broadcast on the jumbotron for a packed house of 7,033 to hear.
The top-ranked Terriers were getting dominated, again, by No. 3 Michigan State, a night after a miserable 4-2 defeat on national television. What did BU need to do to turn things around?
“We could win some more puck battles,” said McCarthy, captain of the Terriers.
That’s what this marquee non-conference series, featuring a combined 34 NHL Draft picks, ultimately came down to. Not the flash or the individual talent or the pretty goals, even though four different first-rounders scored over both games. Nope. This was about physicality. It was about which team could play a simple, direct game. And yes, cliché or not, it was about getting pucks in deep and winning battles along the boards.
The Spartans arrived at Agganis prepared to do that, and accordingly made light work of an immature BU team in Friday’s series opener. The first period on Saturday was much the same.
“We want to put pucks behind their [defenseman] and just wear them down,” said MSU freshman forward Porter Martone, the sixth overall pick in 2025.
For the first four periods of this series, BU tried to be flashy and it was simply mauled. In the final two, the Terriers found a way to match MSU’s physicality and they wound up scoring three goals. That’s the lesson for top-ranked BU after getting swept by the Spartans, completed with a thrilling 4-3 overtime loss on Saturday. The Terriers have all the talent in the world, and it won’t get them anywhere if they’re unable — or unwilling — to play a pragmatic game.
“We won more battles down low,” BU head coach Jay Pandolfo said of Saturday’s game. “Yesterday, in the offensive zone, honestly I could count on one hand how many legit battles we won down low. Tonight was a lot better.”
McCarthy scored the Terriers’ opening goal on Saturday early in the third period, and it came at the end of a sustained spell of offensive zone time in which forwards Brandon Svoboda and Ben Merrill each won multiple battles behind MSU’s goal. That same line scored the game-tying goal late in the third, and there was nothing sexy about it — BU entered the zone by dumping a puck deep, Merrill and linemate Conrad Fondrk won the puck in the corner and kicked it out to defenseman Sascha Boumedienne at the point, then he fired a wrister that Fondrk tipped past star goalie Trey Augustine.
Pandolfo mentioned both Svoboda and Merrill when asked for a player he was particularly impressed with on Saturday, citing the pair’s physicality and ability to win battles.
“You need that against Michigan State,” he said. “They’re big. They’re heavy.”
The Spartans boast 15 draft picks, two of them first-rounders who arrived this offseason from the CHL (Martone is one of them). They’re the fourth-youngest team in the country and one of the most hyped programs in college hockey. And yet, their game isn’t about flash, and Pandolfo knew it.
“We want to be fast, we want to be direct, and honestly just keep it simple,” Martone said. “You look at the Florida Panthers, back-to-back Stanley Cup champions, and the philosophy for them is to wear teams down…that’s something we model our game after.”
Not the free-flowing, highlight-reel style you’d expect from a team with a boatload of future NHLers, and that’s the point. The Terriers and their 19 draft picks tried to get cute on Friday night and all they did was commit brutal turnovers and annoy their head coach.
“We wanna cut back and turn and it’s just, it’s a problem,” a peeved Pandolfo said postgame on Friday. “Against a team like that you have to advance pucks north, and we didn’t want to.”
BU wasn’t immune to those kinds of mistakes on Saturday. Right after McCarthy’s goal, freshman Jack Murtagh played a pass across his own defensive zone and it was easily intercepted by Martone, who strolled into a 2-on-1 and calmly assisted the Spartans’ third goal. Murtagh had plenty of space in front of him to advance the puck but only considered passing across. He and the Terriers paid the price, then played a much more direct style the rest of the way and reaped the benefits.
“They’re a very skilled team,” Martone said of BU postgame on Saturday. But: “I think they kept it more simple today.”
BU didn’t win, of course. But the Terriers got that close to completing their comeback in overtime, and they forced the extra frame because they played smart, mature hockey in the final two periods. Pandolfo may have built the nation’s youngest and most talented team, but if the group’s first big test was a reminder of anything: The Terriers are at their best when they’re willing to do the dirty work.
“Moving forward,” Pandolfo said, “we know how we have to play to have success.”
