College Hockey Update:  This one nearly had a headline that read “BU Gives Away NCAA Championship,” but that seemed a little too unfair to Providence, seeing how they won the game. The ESPN SportsCenter story on the NCAA Championship opened with these words, “A stunning and heartbreaking loss by Boston University in the NCAA . . . . ”  Well, in the games I saw BU play this year, they had a style of just sitting on top of their opponents and containing them.  They also had a style of playing hard for a period and a half, or two periods.  Usually it was the second and the third, and sometimes only the third.  In their last two games they played very hard at the outset, and did not finish well at all.

Last night’s NCAA Hockey Championship game in Boston started out with Boston University charging hard, controlling the pace of the game, and controlling the neutral zone.  Despite all this, Providence scored first, midway through the first period, when Providence broke through for a flurry on the goal.  First a shot by Noel Acciari was blocked by BU goalie Matt O’Connor, and on the rebound, Acciari’s second shot hit the post, and bounced out to Anthony Fiorentino, who blasted it in for the 1-0 Providence lead.  A total breakdown in the BU defense left Acciari approaching the goal in the slot to the right, undefended and unchecked.  Three and a half minutes later, BU forward Ahti Oksanen fired a shot in to tie it at 1-1.  On the ensuing faceoff, BU forward Jack Eichel won the faceoff and charged straight down the ice with a Terrier in tow on each side of him.  As he skated into coverage he passed off to Danny O’Regan, who backhanded a shot to score and give BU the lead, 2-1, with about 7:10 remaining in the period.  BU scored two goals in four seconds, a new record for the NCAA Championship game, but no consolation whatsoever for what was on the way.  BU continued to control the play, outshooting Providence 18-6 in the first.

The second picked up where the first had left off, but after about two minutes, BU’s John MacLeod found his way to the penalty box via in interference call, and Providence pressed.  BU once again seemed to be able to contain this, until, with only a few seconds left on the penalty, Providence forward Trevor Mingoia held all the attention of the BU skaters, and slipped a quick pass to Mark Jankowski down low, who one-timed it in for the score to tie it up, 2-2.  BU kept the pressure up, and seven minutes later, Ahti Oksanen fired another shot for BU which Gillies stopped but didn’t contain, and speeding BU forward Cason Hohmann made quick work, burying the rebound, to make it 3-2, BU.  In the last eight minutes of the period, play evened out between the two, but BU contained Providence, and the period ended 3-2, BU, and BU accumulated a slight edge in shots on goal over Providence, 22-17.

The third picked up where the second left off, with play fairly even, and eventually with Providence taking charge of the direction and the momentum.  BU seemed content to protect their razor-thin one goal lead, and was managing to hold Providence off.  With only about eight and a half minutes to go, Providence defenseman Tom Parisi dumped the puck into the BU zone from about the redline, as he was leaving the ice on a changeover.  What ensued was absolutely unbelievable. First of all the puck was a Texas-leaguer, heading off the the right of the goal, and probably shouldn’t have been touched, with two Terrier defenseman charging into the zone.  But BU goalie Matt O’Connor reached his glove up, yes, up, and to his left, heading away from the goal, to catch the puck.  He then seemed not to know if he had the puck or not, and looked over his left shoulder into the corner, apparently looking for the puck, as he dropped his glove down.  The puck dropped out of his glove, and rolled backwards, improbably enough, between his legs, and into the goal to give Providence a late Christmas present, eerily similar to the mint on a pillow he had given to North Dakota for a goal two nights earlier.

And guess what?  With the game surprisingly tied up, Providence went ape.  Right through the roof.  They started playing even more intensely than they already had been.  Only two minutes later, the pace forced BU to make a wild clearing attempt, and they were called for icing.  With the puck coming back to the BU net for a faceoff, BU coach David Quinn called a timeout to try to settle his team down  Meanwhile, on the Providence bench, Assistant Coach Steve Miller drew up a faceoff play that required Providence to win the draw, passing off to the left in front of the goal, and to have the Providence player at the end of the line block out the BU player at the end of the line.  Providence left wing Brandon Tanev was to follow the puck past the two tied-up players and fire to the goal.  Ok, puck drop . . . . and the play was executed exactly as drawn up, with the BU player failing to drop back and slide to the center of the ice to defend the puck.  BU goalie Matt O’Connor went immediately to the ice, sitting down and leaving the top shelf open, and that’s exactly where the shot went, giving Providence the 4-3 lead, with about six minutes left.  BU pressed, and was repelled.  They pressed, but didn’t score.  Providence was playing the third the way BU normally played the third (admittedly, with a heck of a nice goal given to them in there). Late in the period BU pulled O’Connor and added an extra attacker.  They kept the puck in the zone and the action was frantic, but Providence repelled BU on two good shots on the goal, and contained them on every opportunity.  With time running out the puck was passed down to the post to BU’s Roberto and Hohmann and as they stretched out to get it, Roberto got a shot off to possibly tie it as Gillies looked as though he was down on the ice.  But Gillies somehow got his stick out to the post and stopped the shot.  Time ticked off the clock, and Providence had held of the BU charge to become the 2015 NCAA Champions for the first time in their history.  This is great for college hockey.  This is the third consecutive first-time winner, and the fourth in the last five years.    Congratulations to the Providence Friars.

Our Pool

Our Pool was about as ugly as the championship game.  And mainly because of Providence! They kept winning, and no one picked them to go very far at all.  So good for them.  Same as Yale two years ago — ranked #15, seeded 15th in the tournament, played the championship game against a team from their conference, scored four goals and won it!  Same script basically.  So this year, had BU won, Deidre Shymanski would have won the pool outright.  But with Providence winning it, the pool ended in a two-way tie between Deidre and Ken Klein.  They were given four tie-breaker questions to answer.  And on the first answer, they diverged, setting up a winner: Which team would score first?  Deidre answered  BU, and Ken answered Providence, and therefore, Ken Klein is this year’s winner of our pool, with nine correct picks.  Congratulations to Ken, your T-Shirt (no sweatshirts were made this year) is on the way to you.

Here are the final standings in our pool.  Entrants are ranked by number of correct picks out of a total of 15 possible correct picks:

• 9 correct picks and tie-breaker winner:  Ken Klein
• 9 correct picks:  DShymanski
• 8  Ramsey, Rarden, Sell
• 7  Bogosian, Knutsen, Pastor, Sempere, Wienbar
• 6  Allen, Cook, Fairbrother, Kaycie, Krajan, McLean, Peterson, Schmidt, GgSchreader, JSchreader, OSchreader, TShymanski, Speare
• 5  Breen, Erdman, Holte, Ide, Kramer, Kriesel, Mattson, BMichela, O’Brien, GnSchreader, Smigielski
• 4  Bettendorf, Cattermole, Gallus, Huberty, Slaughter
• 3  Bricknell, Rugani, Ryan
• 2  MMichela
• 1  Carlisle

Well, that does it for another great year of college hockey.  And what big developments do we have to look forward to?  Well, probably the biggest one on the way is that Arizona State will start the move to playing Division I Hockey.  It won’t happen fast, as in a couple of years they will go DI independent, and probably go into a conference a couple of years after that.  But it could be the start of an expansion of several new DI teams, which would be great for college hockey if it happens that way.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, and especially for being in the pool.

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned, and go Terriers!

— Tom