BOSTON — Midway through the first period at Matthews Arena on Saturday afternoon, Anezka Cabelova entered the offensive zone and put a puck on net. Dozens of feet away, Tara Watchorn hung her head.
Watchorn hates when her Boston University women’s hockey team takes shots just for the sake of taking shots. The Terriers’ identity — desired identity, anyway — is sustaining possession in the zone. Watchorn wants to build momentum and establish a territorial advantage. Uncompetitive shots that inevitably lead to a whistle and a faceoff don’t help.
So during the media timeout following Cabelova’s shot against Northeastern, Watchorn took the huddle. Her message was long and animated. One of her instructions?
“Wear them down.”
That’s what BU did so well last season, when it came out of nowhere to win Hockey East in Watchorn’s second season. That is what these Terriers need to do to defend their title, something Watchorn preaches time and time again. And that is what Watchorn’s third team, which was swept by the No. 12 Huskies with a 7-3 loss on Saturday, has failed to do, and it’s why the Terriers are far, far away from where they want and expected to be.
BU is 1-7. It is 1-2 in Hockey East play. It is already eight points behind the conference lead (albeit with two games in hand). It has scored just 15 goals in eight games. This is a much different, much younger team than last season’s, and Watchorn has rightfully declared it unfair to expect these Terriers to simply pick up where those Terriers left off. Patience with this group is required. BU also purposely made life hard on itself with a brutal non-conference schedule — all but one of its first five opponents are currently ranked in the USCHO poll — but against the type of competition Watchorn wants the program to belong with, BU has yet to play its game for a full 60 minutes.
The Terriers can’t keep waiting. It’s getting late early.
Watchorn simply doesn’t believe that you are what your record says you are, but she’d likely agree that you are what your performances say you are. And that’s the problem for BU. Its record is bad. Its performances haven’t been much better.
“We have a week to figure that out,” said Watchorn when asked for her takeaways from BU’s performance on Saturday.
She cut a frustrated figure in her postgame availability. Her answers were short and blunt. She declined to actually provide those takeaways, saying she “had no immediate thoughts right now.” When asked if she would change anything about BU’s power play, which is now 1 for 29 on the season, she said, “everything’s open to be changed.” As for her message to the team immediately after the loss, Watchorn said the team would debrief when they got back to campus.
Not exactly the staunchly optimistic outlook Watchorn has become known for providing after losses. Notably, no player accompanied her in her availability, the first time that’s happened with reporters on site all year.
Northeastern is also plenty young and plenty different from the group that lost to BU in March’s Hockey East title game, but it’s now 6-2 and undefeated in league play. Sure, the Huskies got two of their goals on Saturday courtesy of two strokes of genius from star sophomore Eloise Caron, plays Watchorn’s team couldn’t do much about, and the other four on the power play. But the Huskies also clearly outplayed the Terriers over both games of this series.
BU couldn’t win puck battles or loose pucks at all on Saturday, something that was also an issue in Friday’s 3-1 loss. The Terriers consistently failed to maintain possession through first interactions with Husky defenders after entering the zone. Watchorn speaks ad nauseam about BU’s players ending their shifts when they have possession in the zone, in order to build momentum and sustain said possession. But the Terriers can’t do that if they don’t have any possession to begin with, and if they keep losing as many battles as they currently are, they’re not going to get any.
“No. Not at all,” Watchorn said when asked if BU is winning enough battles and loose pucks.
When asked if that’s a technique problem or an effort problem, Watchorn said it was both.
It’s not the only problem. The Terriers looked far slower than the Huskies all weekend, which was expected, but they also looked far less physical, a major issue given that physicality is how BU made up for its relative lack of speed last season. You can’t exactly wear opposing teams down if you aren’t the more physical group.
After falling behind 4-0 midway through the second period on Saturday, BU played a raucous back half of the frame and scored two goals, taking all the momentum into the intermission. Watchorn said BU’s improved physicality was a big reason why, but it’s clearly not enough for the Terriers to only do it for 10 minutes.
“It starts in practice,” said Watchorn when asked how BU can be more physical. “It’s how we’re competing and playing with contact there.”
These are foundational things the Terriers simply must do better, before they can begin to address plenty of other issues — which include their discipline (BU took six penalties on Saturday, including captain Maeve Carey’s costly five-minute major in the third) and their play on special teams. BU conceded on three of its penalty kills, bringing the Terriers’ kill to 79 percent this season, a significant regression from last, when BU’s kill finished second in the entire country. And, of course, Watchorn’s 1-for-29 power play is another animal altogether.
“We’ll have to dive in and take a look at the film and debrief as a group,” Watchorn said.
It’s still early. The sky is never falling after only three conference games. The floor was always going to be lower for this team, given the bevy of experience and talent it lost and the youth of the replacements. But given how poor BU has looked against top competition thus far, the concern is just how low that floor might be.
