Cristina Romano
Jay Pandolfo arrived with a thud.
The fourth-year head coach of the Boston University men’s hockey team barged through the double doors of the Agganis Arena press room Friday night, took a firm seat at the dais and offered a tirade of an opening statement, rambling for almost two minutes about an “embarrassing” performance he labeled as “losing hockey.”
If it wasn’t the worst game BU has played the last four years — and it very well might’ve been — it was certainly the angriest Pandolfo, who has seen this so many times that his mood after an 8-4 loss to UConn transcended disappointment or even irritation. It bordered on fury.
And how could you blame him? What could’ve been — should’ve been — a statement win for his group after getting swept by Michigan State last weekend deteriorated into the latest in a long line of Friday horrors, in which BU has consistently decided not to play the way it knows it should play. This is a very different roster to last season, but through four weeks of 2025-26, the story has been the same — after laying eggs in series openers throughout 2024-25, BU (2-3-1, 0-1 Hockey East) has now collapsed in the opener of its two toughest series so far this year.
“It’s getting frustrating pretty quickly here,” an exhausted Pandolfo said once he’d gotten all his grievances off his chest.
The Terriers blew three different leads before somehow losing by four, the Huskies’ eight goals the most BU has conceded since 2022, a stretch that includes BU’s 7-2 loss at North Dakota almost exactly a year ago, also on a Friday. They spent the final two periods either shooting themselves in the foot or sleepwalking, the most catastrophic moment being UConn’s fourth goal to tie the game, a play that started with BU freshman Jack Murtagh skating into a 1-on-0 but somehow finished with Husky freshman Carlin Dezainde converting a 3-on-1 chance at the other end.
How did that happen?
“We’re sleeping,” Pandolfo deadpanned. “That’s what happened.”
The No. 11 Huskies (3-2, 1-0 HE) took the lead on the power play a few minutes later, when an unmarked Ethan Gardula tipped in a shot from fellow sophomore Kai Janviriya. A couple minutes after that, BU went to its own power play with a chance to equalize, only for senior forward Owen McLaughlin to take an interference penalty just three seconds into the man-advantage. BU offered nothing from there, moseying through a third period in which it conceded three more goals. Sophomore goalie Mikhail Yegorov was pulled after UConn’s sixth — continuing his relatively poor start to the year — and Pandolfo said postgame he considered pulling him during the second intermission.
Not that the goalie was the problem on Friday night.
“I can handle losing a hockey game when you play well,” Pandolfo said. “I can’t handle just playing losing hockey, and that’s what that was. 2-0 lead. 3-2 lead. 4-3 lead. And you lose 8-4? It’s actually embarrassing.”
McLaughlin, a NoDak transfer who scored his first two goals in a BU uniform before taking that penalty, was asked how he was feeling by Agganis Arena’s rinkside reporter at the second intermission and couldn’t muster a positive answer.
“We’ve got to figure this out,” he said.
For once, BU actually came out flying in the first period of a series opener, jumping all over the Huskies to take a 2-0 lead after eight dominant minutes. Whereas the Terriers have lacked urgency and care from puck drop on Fridays of the past, they were excellent to start against UConn. They kept it simple. They won battles along the boards and prevented the Huskies from breaking out of their zone. When they did have to defend, their sticks were everywhere.
UConn was thoroughly outclassed, even if it somehow managed to tie the game at two heading into the first intermission (the second goal directly after a no-call from the officials Pandolfo called “an absolute joke.”)
“Oh, we were outplayed,” UConn coach Mike Cavanaugh confirmed of the first period.
Then, for no apparent reason, the Terriers got away from it all. They got cute, again, even after trying that last Friday and getting mauled by the Spartans. They stopped dumping pucks behind the Huskies’ defensemen and instead tried to enter the zone with pretty passes and sexy individual carries, predictably committing turnovers that opened up a game BU had suffocated.
“Playing simple and direct,” sophomore Brandon Svoboda said Thursday of how the Terriers need to play. “Especially against this UConn team… they’re gonna play the same way as Michigan State.”
The Terriers did that and it worked. Then they tried something else and got embarrassed.
“They’re not buying into playing winning hockey,” Pandolfo said. “We were ready to play. That’s the thing that’s pretty frustrating. The guys see what works, but it’s not satisfying.”
Cavanaugh, the cool head in the room, was asked why he thought the game opened up so much and reminded reporters that it’s still so early in the season, saying both he and Pandolfo are still trying to find their teams. On multiple occasions, he insisted that BU would both perform well in Saturday’s series finale in Storrs, Conn., and finish the season as an elite team. If 2024-25 is any indication, Cavanaugh will likely be right. For as bad as Fridays were for BU last season, especially in the first semester, the Terriers almost always responded on Saturdays. And, of course, they eventually made the national championship game.
“It’s very early,” Cavanaugh said.
How easy it was for the winning coach to have that perspective, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. As for the losing one? Well, he’s just sick and tired.