Weekend Recap- Maine and Refs sweep BU

As soon as anyone reads the title to this, the first reaction is going to be stop complaining about the refs. That would be my answer but, unless you were at both of these games you will have no idea how poor the officiating was. Maine took both games by scores of 4-2 and 3-1. Both games were impacted in a major way by questionable(read: awful) calls by the officials. In game 1, Maine's go ahead goal was a powerplay goal 12 seconds after Wade Megan was called for hooking where he sticklifted the Maine player on a breakaway. Referee Tom Quinn took the fate of the game out of the players' hands at a time in the game where if anything you should be less likely to make a call in the end of a tie game. BU and Maine had played an even game to that point and it should have been allowed to play out by the players not referee Tom Quinn, who as a 12 year ref should have know better.

Very little was made of the officiating after Friday night's game by the players as their attention was quickly turned to Saturday night's contest. The same could not be said Saturday night as officiating once again was in Maine's favor. Referees Jeff Bunyon(19th year) and Kevin Keenan(8th) once again indicated the outcome of the game. Maine lead 2-1 in the third when numerous questionable calls were made including an embellishment call on Garrett Noonan as he was blindly cross-checked in the back. They also made a questionable hooking call as Noonan stick lifted a Black Bear. The worst call of all was when BU pulled goalie Kieran Millan and Adam Clendening went back to retrieve a puck and was called for slashing when all he did was make a play on the puck. You know its a bad weekend for the officials when Gravallese was the best ref all weekend. Chris Connolly publicly acknowledged that the refs sucked and Coach Parker made his feeling clear when he was thrown out of last night's contest with 4 seconds left.

Maine played well this weekend as they remained hot and moving up the HE rankings but the officials didn't allow for either game to have the finish it would have in any other league in college hockey.

The two losses set the Terriers back but not significantly as they remain #2 in the Pairwise rankings and 1st in Hockey East with 25 points. The actual standings look as follow now. I am placing them in points per game played to take into account which teams have played more games etc. This might be tough for NU kids to understand but I think it is pretty straightforward.

1. BU 1.31pts/game 25 pts in 19 games

1. Merrimack 1.31pts/game 21pts in 16 games

3. Lowell 1.294 pts/game 22 pts in 17 games

4. BC 1.25pts/game 25 pts in 20 games

5. Maine 1.20 pts/game 24 pts in 20 games

6. PC 1.06 pts/game 17 pts in 16 games

7. UMass .82 pts/game 14 pts in 17 games

8. NU .74 pts/game 14 pts in 19 games

9. UNH .722 13pts in 18 games

10. UVM .28 pts/game 5 pts in 18 games

- BU travels to Merrimack next Friday in which is turning out to be a game for first place in Hockey East. Hockey East is beginning to separate into a top tier,lower tier, and then Vermont who just suck. The top 5 appear to be BU,MC, BC, Lowell, and Maine, all of which are in the top 10 in the Pairwise. The next 4 fighting for the last 3 playoff spots will be PC, UMass, UNH, and Northeastern. It certainly seems like that 4-5 matchup in the HE quarters will be two nationally ranked teams going at it. So ideally, we would want our Terriers anywhere from 1-3 to avoid that 4-5 matchup in the HE Quarter Finals.

- BU also lost freshman d-man Alexx Privitera to a right wrist injury on a high hit by Maine d-man Will O'Neill. Junior d-man Max NiCastro also was injured Friday night did not play Saturday night forcing BU to rotate 5 d-men both nights as they dressed an extra forward last night. Ryan Ruikka played well in his first action in a while as did senior forward Kevin Gilroy while freshman Yasin Cisse dressed but did not see much action. I would expect NiCastro back for Friday's game as he is a tough player as he showed his freshman year when he played the next weekend after cutting his wrist open in the HE Qf's against Merrimack.