Tara Watchorn didn’t see how the play began, but when she looked up from the bench and saw the senior they call “Voter” looping around an opponent on the right wing, she had a good feeling. Great decision, the head coach of the Boston University women’s hockey team thought to herself. You have her.
Christina Vote did, indeed, have her defender beat, and after gliding past, she sliced her way to the net front and snuck the puck around the leg of Boston College goalie Grace Campbell.
BU graduate student Lindsay Bochna arrived at the scene.
The puck sat there, jammed between the post and Campbell’s unknowing skate, a few harmless inches from the goal line.
“I was like ‘Oh, sh —,’” Bochna recalled postgame. “‘It’s not in the net yet.’”
So Bochna, as she and her teammates so often have during this remarkable run, pounced, poking home her eighth of the year and burying BU’s arch-rival after 87 minutes and 12 seconds of do-or-die hockey. Wednesday night started as the program’s first Hockey East semifinal appearance in six seasons. It eventually became BU’s third double-overtime game ever, and it ended as the night the second-seeded Terriers punched their first ticket to the league title game since 2016.
They’ll play fifth-seeded Northeastern, playing in its ninth straight HE final, on Saturday in Storrs, Conn.
Vote’s momentum had carried her away from the game-winning play and to the glass. When she looked back and realized Bochna had secured the 3-2 victory, she raised her stick to her facemask, as if she was putting her bare hand over an agape mouth. Junior Clara Yuhn, trailing behind the play, put both hands on her head and skated towards Vote. Bochna followed, unleashing an enormous fist-pump.
At the other end of the ice, senior goalie Callie Shanahan immediately jumped out of her crease, bee-lining towards her teammates. She was met by graduate captain Tamara Giaquinto, whom she shares a hug with before every game. This time, Shanahan and Giaquinto tackled each other onto the Walter Brown Arena sheet.
A couple feet away, the rest of the team mobbed Vote.
“I don’t remember the last time I was in a game like this,” Bochna said.
It was a spectacle neither team deserved to lose, one that both No. 13 BU and No. 15 BC could’ve won on myriad different occasions before Vote and Bochna finally ended the party. It was a game of inches, with one goal disallowed by replay review and multiple others denied by the goalposts. And it was a night that saw BU head into three different 15-minute intermissions with its dream season on the brink.
“We were trying to keep it light, having fun with each other in the locker room between periods,” explained Bochna, whose team has built so much of its success on its belief and its refusal to panic.
Watchorn said there “was never a doubt.” It was not the first time a Terrier has used that term this season.
As for the fatigue factor in a double-overtime game?
“They’re just kind of laughing, felt good about their preparation. They’re like ‘no one else has practiced like us all year,’” Watchorn said. “And you kind of lean on those fun stories, like stuff that we made them do. The early-morning workouts, the 10-mile bike or the extra ‘compete’ in practice.”
From a purely tactical standpoint, Wednesday was pure chaos for vast stretches, too, as the Terriers and Eagles traded odd-skater rushes and quality scoring chances during a game on which neither could establish a firm grip. Watchorn, whose team thrived during the early parts of the season because it was so good at establishing a firm grip, warned on Tuesday her team’s fourth matchup with the free-flowing Eagles could dissolve into this.
“It’s hockey,” she said in her midweek media call. “There’s so much unpredictability in our sport.”
She was right. BU (23-11-2) couldn’t do on Wednesday what it did in a marquee November win at Conte Forum, when it held the Eagles (21-13-2) to just nine shots on goal in a 3-1 suffocation. Instead, the Terriers had to rely on the muscle they’d been developing throughout the second semester, one they debuted in another victory over BC at Walter Brown on Jan. 31 — surviving “track meet” style games.
In regulation, during which it twice fell behind by a goal, BU barely established any sustained offensive zone time. But when the Terriers needed an equalizing tally to save their season, they found one in a transitional moment both times.
Early in the second period, Vote won a race to a loose puck in the offensive zone, beat a defender with a nifty move at the boards and found a wide-open Yuhn, who left no doubt with a shot from the low slot.
Then, five minutes into the third, junior Luisa Welcke forced a BC turnover at the blueline as the Eagles attempted to break out of their defensive zone. She found her twin sister, Lilli, who skated to the bottom of the circle before firing a perfect pass across the goalmouth to junior Riley Walsh, who tapped the goal home.
The Welcke-Walsh line, which combined for seven of BU’s 12 points in Saturday’s overtime quarterfinal win over Vermont, didn’t start together on Wednesday. But when Watchorn shortened the bench and started playing with three lines after the first period, she reunited the trio. Walsh, famously, visited the Welcke twins in their native Germany in the offseason and has referred to the group as “triplets.”
Whether with Walsh or junior forward Sydney Healey, the Welcke twins were excellent all night, creating constant chances on the rush while continuing their dominant play defensively, critical in a game as back-and-forth as Wednesday’s. Both the Terriers and Eagles finished with 40 shots on goal.
“It’s been subtle and all at once,” Watchorn said of the twins’ improvement. “They’ve been good, but the last couple games has been a whole other level.”
BU couldn’t have survived Wednesday without Shanahan (38 saves), either, who stood tall against a plethora of Grade-A BC chances, including a 2-on-1 in the first overtime period and three 1-on-0 breakaways in regulation for Eagle sophomore Julia Pellerin, Hockey East’s leading scorer with 20 goals.
As much as BU creating chances on the rush was paramount in a game like Wednesday’s, so was BU’s ability to prevent BC’s from turning into goals. Shanahan was up to the challenge.
“Unbelievable,” Watchorn said.
“She keeps us in so many games,” Bochna added. “So grateful for her when she’s in between the pipes.”
Shanahan, who’s been through plenty during her four years at BU, screamed at a camera as she skated back to the locker room after the game. She was the one who most aggressively expressed her confidence in the direction these Terriers were headed, saying she believed her team could win a national championship back in October.
And four months later, here they are. On Saturday, Shanahan and her teammates will play for a ticket to BU’s first NCAA tournament in a decade.
Watchorn, in her second year as head coach, was asked on Wednesday what she would’ve thought before the season if someone had told her the team would be in that position.
True to form, she responded: “Believed it, for sure.”
More reading on BU women’s hockey:
- How BU survived a scare in the quarterfinal to defeat Vermont in overtime
- BU thinks it found its ‘playoff game.’ Can the Terriers bring it to HE tournament?
- BU should’ve won the regular season title. But don’t forget what the Terriers accomplished
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