BOSTON — The only thing you need to know about Jay Pandolfo’s office is that it’s big.
Everything about it. The couches. The meeting table. The trophy cases. The desk is fitted with two monitor screens, the cabinet behind it has several glasses of wine resting on top. Overlooking everything is one word, big and bold: ‘BOSTON.’
We’re inside Agganis Arena, one of the biggest in college hockey, which resides on Agganis Way, one of the busiest streets on the campus of one of the most expensive universities in the country.
This — residing in this office, sitting in this seat, leading this program — is a big deal. And Pandolfo, the head coach of BU men’s hockey, knows it.
Let’s be clear. After two seasons in the big chair, Pandolfo is killing it. He’s winning more than 70 percent of the time. His team is scoring almost four goals a game. He’s won a Hockey East ‘double,’ made back-to-back Frozen Fours and reinvigorated a dormant blueblood program.
He has brought BU men’s hockey back. But, still, not to where he wants it to be.
Because big games are a way of life around here. And in the two biggest Pandolfo has coached, the 2023 and 2024 National Semifinals, BU lost both. The latter was an overtime heartbreaker; BU lost another final, in the 2024 Beanpot against rival Northeastern, in overtime, too. Under Pandolfo, the Terriers have played for six trophies across the Beanpot, Hockey East and NCAA tournaments. They have won once.
Staggeringly, those hated Huskies, winners of barely over half their games in the last two years, have won more trophies than BU since Pandolfo took over.
This new regime has been nothing short of excellent. And they’re so close. But they know the expectation is greater than that.
That’s why the man in the big chair in the big office of the biggest program on campus is focused on something so very small.
“For me,” Pandolfo says, “it’s just the little things over the course of one big game that can really make the difference.”
***
Before an interview with The Boston Hockey Blog, Pandolfo is finishing a meeting with one of his players. It’s Aiden Celebrini, a sophomore defenseman coming off a fairly quiet first season in the shadow of his younger brother, Macklin. Before Celebrini can leave the meeting, Pandolfo jacks him up, pounding his chest Jim Harbaugh-style. Celebrini is all smiles and, eventually, bounces out of the office.
“He’s so great at having an open door all the time,” sophomore co-captain Shane Lachance says of his coach.
Pandolfo has done a lot in two seasons at BU, but perhaps chief among them, he’s rebuilt the culture.
A former captain and national champion at BU and a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the New Jersey Devils, Pandolfo knows the right way to do things. That much is understood. “Obviously,” junior co-captain Ryan Greene says, “his resume speaks for itself.” But knowing the right way and enforcing the right way, every day, is different.
“Jay Pandolfo does not walk around BU like he’s a big deal, like he’s the big CEO, like, you know, I’m gonna be the guy who’s unapproachable,” says Colby Cohen, a former NHLer and national champion at BU. One of Pandolfo’s biggest culture pillars is “respect” — “it’s about respecting really anyone you come in contact with,” he says — and that starts at the top.
When asked what he’s enjoyed most about being a head coach, Pandolfo says very little about the ‘head’ part and instead talks about encouraging feedback from his staff. “We always come to an agreement, that’s how I do things,” he says. “And I think the players feel that, so that goes a long way for the players feeling comfortable with what we do.” Lachance, who will be BU’s first sophomore captain ever, explains that players can go to Pandolfo for anything — problems on the ice, problems in the classroom, problems back home — and that builds trust when it comes time for the actual coaching, which is no doubt demanding.
“He just cares about us so much,” Lachance says.
“You’re willing to go through a wall for Jay,” Cohen adds.
And that’s needed, especially when another big cultural pillar is “compete,” something much easier to write on a wall than actually put in practice. Pandolfo is by no means the first dude with a whistle to think of it, but it’s a necessity nonetheless. “You can’t play at this level if you’re not going to compete,” Pandolfo deadpans.
So BU competes. A lot. The Athletic’s Joe Smith reported last season the team hung a fitness leaderboard on the wall in the gym, held Ping-Pong tournaments and played chess midseason. “When you’re used to [competing] every day,” Pandolfo says, “it’s not just at the rink where it happens.”
Says freshman forward Cole Eiserman: “Off the ice, with the stupid games we play and whatever we’re doing, it’s always competitive.” The game he’s enjoyed most so far is Mario Kart. His go-to character is Donkey Kong.
“Competitiveness,” Lachance says, “is the biggest thing for us.”
When Pandolfo is asked if the trivial competition was something he intentionally promoted, he cedes that it simply comes naturally to the players. But it’s that kind of ubiquitous application of the culture that Pandolfo wants.
“You can talk about different values and all these sorts of things,” he says. “But if you’re not living it every day, it’s not going to work.”
The players have clearly bought in. Former captain Case McCarthy’s younger brother, Gavin, now a sophomore defenseman, followed his sibling to Agganis Way. Quinn and Lane Hutson’s younger brother, Cole, arrived this offseason, too; he figures to be a star from the jump. And in general, BU is recruiting remarkably well under Pandolfo.
The culture he and his staff have built is a big reason why.
“If my kids were of age,” Cohen says, “these are the people I would entrust [them] to be around.”
***
Moments after Denver buried the overtime winner in the 2024 National Semifinal, Pandolfo took the podium in St. Paul, Minnesota for an opening statement. In front of the media, Pandolfo knows what to say and how to say it, normally holding his cards close to his chest and showing little emotion. But in St. Paul, he appeared stunned. He took a swig of water, grunted under his breath, stumbled as he tried to start an answer and stared downwards.
“Really disappointing,” he finally muttered.
This was supposed to be the night BU returned to its first national championship game in nine years. The Terriers were the No. 2 team in the country at the end of a season in which they were ranked in the top three in 17 of 25 USCHO.com polls. Their leading scorer, a freshman, would win the Hobey Baker Award a day later. And the locker room was as close-knit as ever.
If you zoom out, Pandolfo and his staff are basically acing this gig. Consistency over the course of a long season. Recruiting star talent. Building a culture and maintaining it. BU is doing the big things almost impossibly well.
And yet. Another loss in another big game.
“It obviously stung for a while,” Lachance says.
But if you zoom in, there’s plenty to point to. The Terriers dominated the first period but left up only, 1-0, before letting the Pioneers back in. “We let off the gas a little bit,” Greene says. BU’s penalty kill was excellent, it went 4-for-4, but the Terriers’ third-ranked power play didn’t get a single opportunity. And even then, Pandolfo said after the game BU “had to find ways to put teams away five on five,” adding, “we didn’t do that.” Early in overtime, big scoring chances came and went, squandered by some of the Terriers’ best players.
BU recognizes the common denominator there. It’s the little things. The details. The tiny mistakes that build up throughout a game. Pandolfo didn’t offer much for the rest of his postgame presser in St. Paul, but by far his longest and most thoughtful answer was about small errors costing the Terriers big.
“One turnover on the blue line,” Lachance says now, “can lose your season.”
It is not, however, the easiest problem to solve. The little things are often the hardest to control. “It’s hockey,” says senior goaltender Mathieu Caron. “It’s a game at the end of the day.” Luck is a factor, as it is in all sports. Most of the players that were asked for a specific ‘little thing’ BU needs to solve defaulted to a broad answer. Pandolfo admits the Terriers can’t be perfect. But somehow, they need to be better.
“Do you need a little bit of puck luck, and bounces here and there? Of course you do,” Pandolfo said in St. Paul. “But you gotta create that, too.”
It may be a frustrating thing to be stuck on, especially when you’re doing everything else so freakin’ well, but this is the reality of the game. Pandolfo knows that. As a player at BU, Pandolfo made four Frozen Fours but only won the whole thing once. “It’s very difficult to win,” he says, “because you need a lot of things to go right.”
There’s no point in treating it like rocket science. It’s not about tweaking every individual detail until it’s flawless or finding some formula in October to prevent a slashing penalty in April. It’s about raising the standard and bettering the process, day in and day out, to decrease the overall likelihood these mistakes will pop up again.
“We want guys that are everyday guys,” Pandolfo says. “We don’t want guys that are pretty good on Monday and they’re not good again until Friday.” It certainly helps that the returning players and the coaching staff know the standard, know what’s missing in their journey to get there and are more motivated than ever.
“I mean, I’ve never seen a group as fired up as we are right now,” Greene says.
The Terriers were voted the country’s third-best team in the preseason USCHO.com poll, behind only Denver and Boston College, last season’s finalists. Barring something unforeseeable this season, BU will be back playing big games in the postseason.
It’s a different roster, to be sure. It’s a good one, too. But under a coaching staff and program that’s been so successful so quickly, all BU is doing is reinforcing the foundation that’s already accomplished so much.
Because after all, the Terriers are big time again. Now, they just need to be a little bit better.
This story is part of the Daily Free Press’ annual Hockey Issue. Copies are available around campus and at the women’s (Oct. 1) and men’s (Oct. 5) home openers.
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