BURLINGTON, Vt. — When Tara Watchorn emerged from the bowels of Gutterson Fieldhouse for postgame availability on Saturday night, it had been 92 days since she had anything to critique about the Boston University women’s hockey team’s professionalism.
It’s been the buzzword during the program’s sudden revival this season, a stunning run that’s been defined by, among other things, the Terriers’ defiance to adversity — in between games or during — and their refusal to lose to teams below them.
Saturday night, though, BU lost to a team 22 points below it in the Hockey East standings, largely because — according to Watchorn — the Terriers panicked when things got tough.
“We just got frustrated,” Watchorn said. “A little too high and low for the time I’ve seen in a long time, to be quite frank.”
Head coach Jim Plumer insisted his Vermont team would be a tough out before the weekend series — and the Catamounts absolutely were — but after entering unbeaten in 10 games against the bottom six teams in Hockey East, BU faced two extended periods of in-game adversity on Saturday and wilted in both.
Next to nothing has been easy for No. 13 BU (13-6-1, 11-3-1 HE) this season, but the Terriers nevertheless lead the conference because they’ve thrived in those environments. The 3-2 loss at The Gut was just BU’s third in a game that was within a goal headed into the third period (there have been 11 such games) and first since Nov. 16, when BU outplayed Boston College but lost in overtime.
The Cats (5-16-2, 4-10-2 HE) play a unique style Watchorn said is not seen often in Hockey East — “they play a fast game… they don’t want it to be super structured, they want it to be free,” she added — a plan totally at odds with what BU looks to do. “When our strategy broke down a little bit, theirs worked,” Watchorn said, and when getting hemmed in — early in the second and third periods, especially — BU didn’t handle it well.
Graduate captain Tamara Giaquinto whiffed on a pass and cursed at herself loud enough to be heard from the press loft. Freshman Lola Reid couldn’t convert a Grade-A chance on a rebound and immediately struck her stick against the ice. That type of body language hasn’t been present much this season, not even when the Terriers were detonated by Princeton, 8-1, at home the day before Thanksgiving.
BU’s response during and after that loss was one of the best examples of its professionalism so far, and the Terriers proceeded to rattle off three straight wins against Hockey East bottom-feeders, the last of which Friday’s 2-1 win in Burlington.
But on Saturday, BU didn’t behave the way it normally does.
“That professionalism and that ability to remove yourself from the emotion… it’s gonna have to get better,” Watchorn said.
Vermont equalized in the second frame when, after a Vermont avalanche, BU goalie Mari Pietersen failed to catch a routine wrister from junior Lara Beecher, the deflection looping over Pietersen and into goal. And at the end of a barrage of shots on the sophomore’s net seven minutes into the third, BU left graduate Kayla Bent wide open in the circle, and she buried a wrister through traffic to win the game.
The Terriers were pretty good otherwise, and to their credit, they did wake up after each of those concessions, though nothing came of BU’s extended time in the offensive zone at the end of both periods. Still, their deficiencies in spurts cost them a series sweep, against a team that entered the weekend at a second-worst-in-the-country 1.3 goals per game.
“They definitely made adjustments,” Watchorn said. “And I think we got a little too in our heads about it, instead of just really dissecting what was important and not overthinking it.”
It was not great timing to start panicking, to say the least, with the Beanpot semifinal — back at Northeastern’s Matthews Arena, the site of BU’s last display of poor professionalism — against Harvard looming on Tuesday. BU will have just one practice, on Monday, to shake out whatever got into them on Saturday.
Asked if she thought the Terriers were caught looking ahead to that game — BU’s got a legit chance at its first Beanpot in six years — Watchorn said she hadn’t heard anything about it.
“They were professional in that way, they seemed present with their feet on the ground here,” she added.
It wasn’t like BU just came out flat, either. The Terriers couldn’t have come out any faster, actually, as junior Sydney Healey scored on a gorgeous tic-tac-toe play with linemates Lindsay Bochna and Lilli Welcke only 18 seconds into the game. When Vermont equalized on a snipe from freshman Oona Havana eight minutes later, senior assistant captain Maggie Hanzel immediately responded with a snipe of her own.
Ultimately, there was little to explain BU’s sudden loss of the mentality that’s made it so good this season.
Especially since, in the 92 days after a 4-0 loss to Northeastern, the Terriers have just kept rolling.
“It’s not a linear process,” Watchorn said. “It’s about realizing those moments that you need to hit the reset button and you need to look inward and you need to say, ‘Okay, where are we?’”
Wherever they found themselves Saturday in Burlington, they best leave that place behind.
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