For more than two and a half hours of clock time, and 71 minutes of play in Saturday night’s Hockey East championship game, fifth-seeded Boston University and top-seeded New Hampshire played the perfect hockey game.<\/p>\n
There were scoring chances galore in front of a packed FleetCenter, the atmosphere was perfect, the goaltending was perfect. Heck, with everything going right, even the popcorn seemed perfect.<\/p>\n
As the game entered overtime scoreless, the first time a Hockey East title game had ever ended regulation without a goal, there was a recurrent theme around the press box.<\/p>\n
“Let’s hope this game ends on a great goal.”<\/i><\/p>\n
Sorry. folks. The hockey gods were on a coffee break.<\/p>\n
After BU netminder Sean Fields turned aside 40 shots through three-plus periods — saving his best saves for overtime — an innocent-looking Tyson Teplitsky pass through the goalmouth bounced directly from Terrier defenseman Ryan Whitney’s stick into the net, providing the dreaded ending to an otherwise impeccable game.<\/p>\n
“Whenever you get into a playoff game and go into overtime, it seems goals go in that way,” said Fields. “Between the third period and overtime we were saying [in the locker room] to throw everything at the net and maybe get a bounce. [UNH], though, was the one that got the bounce.”<\/p>\n
The result, of course, was a FleetCenter and a UNH bench in pandemonium, and a stunned Fields in disbelief that his armor was breached not by a Wildcat, but by his own teammate.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t that concerned about something getting by [Fields] tonight,” said BU coach Jack Parker. “They were going to have to drill something by him, I thought, and it turned out to be something even weirder than that.”<\/p>\n
UNH goaltender Michael Ayers, who became the first goalie ever to record a shutout in a Hockey East championship game, sympathized with Fields and noted that he himself was concerned about bad bounces getting past him before the overtime started.<\/p>\n
“I said to myself going into overtime, ‘Pay attention to every little thing,'” said Ayers. “With every bounce and every rim off the glass, you never know what’s going to happen.<\/p>\n
Fields’ only prize might have been going home with the William Flynn trophy as tournament MVP. He became just the third player in tournament history — all goaltenders — to take home the MVP trophy from a losing team.<\/p>\n
That though, was little consolation.<\/p>\n
“I’d much rather bring home the Hockey East championship, personally,” said Fields matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n
That takes nothing away from how deserving he is. He made a total of 143 saves in the tournament, including a remarkable 88 during a championship weekend that included back-to-back overtimes.<\/p>\n
Faced with elimination on Friday night, Fields stonewalled Boston College in the first overtime before Justin Maiser propelled BU into Saturday’s championship tilt.<\/p>\n
In a similar situation Saturday, Fields did his job to keep his club alive as long as possible. There was no doubt that by period two, BU had become a little legless and fatigued from Friday night’s marathon semifinal.<\/p>\n
In overtime, Fields made the save of the night and possibly of the playoffs stopping Steve Saviano on a split-second doorstep redirect by flashing his right leg to turn aside the bid.<\/p>\n
When asked to talked about “that” shot and Fields’ save, Saviano said, “I’m not sure which<\/i> save you’re talking about,” further proof of Saviano’s scoring frustration versus BU’s brick wall.<\/p>\n
Regardless, as good as he played and as many saves as we’ll talk about for days and weeks, luck wasn’t on Fields’ side.<\/p>\n
There are no words that ease the pain of losing. There’s nothing you can say to make things better.<\/p>\n
Still, UNH coach Dick Umile did a good job of putting it all in perspective.<\/p>\n
“In this profession, [bounces] are what you live on,” said Umile. “You get into a game and all of a sudden you get to an overtime, whether it’s for the Hockey East championship, the regionals, or the national championship game.<\/p>\n
“You’re just living on the edge waiting for the bounce of a puck and that’s usually what happens. You can play really well and not win it. You’ve got to be good, you’ve got to be lucky — there are a lot of factors that go into it.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen it on both sides. But that’s what you chase — every single game, every single season — to get into a game like that and hopefully the final one.”<\/p>\n
And even for Fields, for whom a bad bounce spoiled a good skate and a perfect game, the knowledge that there’s always a chance for revenge tomorrow will keep him wanting to come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HEA final: Great game, bad ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n