Goaltender Jere Huhtamaa kept BU at bay all night. Photo by Jenna VanSickle.
BU fell flat on Friday night in a 5-1 loss to Merrimack at Agganis Arena. Here are my three takeaways from the game, and all opinions are my own.
Now THAT was a return to Earth
The Terriers came rolling into Friday’s bout with tenth-placed Merrimack on their most momentum of the season, unbeaten in four games and coming off a thrilling come-from-behind, double-OT win in the Beanpot over arch-rival BC. Well, BU came crashing back down to Earth with this dud against the Warriors, leaving Albie O’Connell with a job to do to get his team back on track for Monday’s Beanpot final.
The bottom six were BU’s only threat
The forward lines were shaken up on Friday night, reintroducing Markus Boguslavsky and Jake Witkowski on the fourth line together for the first time in months. As it turned out, Boguslavsky, Witkowski and co. among BU’s bottom six were really the Terriers’ only dangerous options in the attacking zone, poking away at the crease while the skill players atop the depth chart just didn’t have anything going when they needed it.
BU can’t let this be more than two points
What I mean by this headline is, yes, BU lost two conference points against the second-worst team in Hockey East, and missing out on the points meant BU swung from potentially holding second place alone to dropping down to fifth. However, the Terriers cannot let this loss impact them beyond just this one game. They will need to reset quickly with the biggest game of their season at the Beanpot final coming up in just two days.
Right on point Brady. Looking forward to getting back on track Monday night. In my many years of following college hockey I know what northeastern game plan will be. First they will play dirty and chirp hoping to draw retaliation penalties and or disrupt our talented forwards. They are very good at grinding out offensive plays out of something that looks like a broken play. Make no mistake they are very good and we definitely need to play our game. One other point they definitely cherry pick more then any other team our D needs to be cognizant of this.