It was only three weeks ago that the Boston University men’s hockey team was mired in the throes of a four-game losing streak, its longest of the season.
The streak, in which the Terriers were outscored 15-7, put BU’s national standing and chances of securing the Hockey East regular-season title in peril.
At the time, coach Jay Pandolfo said he was looking for his team to play more consistent hockey. Now, following a four-game win streak to end the regular-season, the first-year head coach says his team has found it.
“We’ve definitely gotten better the last two weekends,” Pandolfo said. “Our execution was really off in those games we lost. We kind of got away from our game, how we got success for most of the year. We just had a little bit of a dip in our play. Took us a little longer to get out of it than I think we hoped for.”
The Terriers find themselves as the No. 1 seed in the Hockey East tournament with an 18-6-0 conference record (24-10-0 overall) and will face Vermont for a quarterfinal matchup on Saturday (4:30 p.m.) at Agganis Arena. The winner advances to next week’s Hockey East semifinals at TD Garden.
With a No. 5 ranking in both the USCHO.com D-I men’s poll and the PairWise rankings — which the NCAA selection committee uses to decide which teams get at-large bids to the tournament — BU is certain to find itself among the NCAA’s field of 16 regardless of how it does in the Hockey East playoffs. The conference’s other teams are only guaranteed an NCAA tourney bid if they win the league title.
Despite the privilege of being able to breathe easy knowing their NCAA tourney status is all but certain, Pandolfo pointed to disappointing finishes in two in-season tournaments — the Desert Hockey Classic in Tempe, Ariz., in January and the Beanpot in Boston the following month — as motivation enough to be the only team standing at the Garden next week.
“I think our guys were hoping to get into the Beanpot and give a better effort,” Pandolfo said, referring to his team’s fourth-place finish. “It was pretty disappointing for our group. It’s a similar situation here. We’re going into this feeling like we need to play better in bigger games and more important games. I think our guys are really looking forward to it and not thinking about anything else.”
BU’s top two scorers — senior forward Matt Brown and freshman defenseman Lane Hutson — lead both the team and the league with 43 points each (and are tied for 10th nationally). Pandolfo said that while he hasn’t seen any evidence of a budding friendly rivalry between the two players to see who can finish with the highest point total, their success is part of an overall trend of constant improvement up and down the roster.
“Our guys have pushed each other this year,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of guys who have had some great seasons. It’s that internal competition that can always help a team as well. There’s definitely some of that.”
Another big reason for the Terriers’ success has been junior goalie Drew Commesso, who enters the tournament touting a 2.48 goals-against average and a .906 save percentage. He made 103 saves during BU’s season-ending four-game win streak, including 39 in a 2-0 win against Providence in the regular-season finale.
“He’s really calm in the net,” Pandolfo said. “You can see it when he’s on his game. He doesn’t give up a lot of rebounds. He reads the play very well. You just get confident with him.”
