All I can say is, I'm surprised nobody got tossed. Friday's contest at Agganis proved to be very physical (and chippy at times), picking up right where the Hockey East Quarterfinals left off last season for our Terriers and the Warriors of Merrimack. The games two goals were scored by BU's Ross Gaudet (a rebound off his shoulder, inadvertently), and the Mack's Mike Collins (Terriers defensive breakdown). But the story of last night's game wasn't the two goals - it was the physical nature of play. Merrimack's resident punk, Kyle Bigos, was in full force last night - cheap shots, after the whistle confrontations, etc. In fact, it seemed like most of their team was following his lead. There was a lot of hitting after the whistle and unnecessary hits to the head. One of the more blatant incidents that comes to mind was a Merrimack player skating up alongside D man Adam Clendening and pushing his head into the boards (no call, obviously). This isn't to say that BU didn't play physically, its just that most of the time it seemed like Merrimack was attempting to get BU guys into scraps and not the other way around.
The actual game play itself wasn't that great either. Both teams had bad turnovers leading to good scoring chances for the other squad. Both teams only had a handful of good looks at goals, almost all of which were promptly denied by the goaltenders. Honestly, I felt like we are a much better team than Merrimack. We just played down to their level last night.
The highlights for both teams were twofold - the penalty kill and the goaltenders. BU held Merrimack to an incredible 0-10 on the power play last night, while they held us to 0-7. Terrier netminder Kieran Millan (the game's first star) made 35 saves last night, while Warrior goalie Joe Cannata made 32.
The teams are back at it tonight in Lawler Arena, 7 pm. For now, here are the post game press conferences.
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