Frozen Four Preview Part I : Respectful Swagger

This weekend the Boston University Terriers will see their season end regardless of the outcome. The bad news is that the season is almost over but the good news is that it could end with the Terriers skating around TD Garden with a trophy for the third time this season. This victory lap would be the most important of them all. Their opponent in the national semifinal (aka national championship game) on Thursday will be the North Dakota Fighting Sioux.  A fun fact about North Dakota is that their state legislation tried twice to drop the North from the state name so that the state would be just Dakota. This has happened as recently as 1989. It would have been absolutely wild if the name dropped from 4 words to just one "Dakota (nicknames to be determined later)". On to the actual hockey, North Dakota is the regular season NCHC champion but did not win their conference tournament. They got to the Frozen Four by beating Quinnipiac and St. Cloud State in their Fargo regional. They beat a team that barely got in and that finished the year two games over .500...

Weekend Recap: Boston University is Frozen Four Bound

The 2014-2015 Boston University Terriers did what they do best this weekend: win. The Terriers won back to back games in dramatic 3-2 fashion to win the Northeast regional in Manchester. They were lead on the scoresheet by their upperclassmen as Evan Rodrigues lead the Terriers with 3 goals including the game winner on Saturday in the regional final. Rodrigues is certainly proving to the idiots/ Hobey Baker Award voters why they were so wrong about leaving him out of the Hobey Finalists even as he was/is second in the country in points. His third goal of the weekend was beautiful as he toe dragged past a defender before absolutely embarrassing the Duluth goalie who may still have not reacted to the laser he let off. Friday night's hero was Danny O'Regan who buried a rebound off a Jack Eichel shot in OT after O'Regan got robbed by Yale goalie Alex Lyon earlier in OT and robbed by the post at the end of regulation.

The Terriers now return to the Frozen Four for the first time in 2009 as they prepare to win their 6th national title. The runner ups in the Frozen Four are North Dakota, Providence College and Nebraska Omaha. UNO and PC will play the consolation game next Thursday at 5:00 before the BU/ North Dakota game at 8:30.

Weekend Preview: Northeast Regional- See you back at the Garden

                                                 - Photo courtesy of GoTerriers.com/Rich Gagnon

The BU Terriers begin the 2015 NCAA Tournament in Manchester,NH as their quest for their 6th National Championship continues. The Terriers will face Yale in the first round. Now I won't be declaring the Yale game a scrimmage because anything can happen in the NCAA tournament like two years ago when Yale beat Minnesota and North Dakota as a 4 seed to win it all. I am just saying that I love BU's chances. Don't be offended Yale fans/BU haters, BU is just better than them.

 Yale made the tournament as an at-large team and is the top defensive team in the country statistically. They come from the ECAC  EZAC conference where they failed to make it out of the conference tournament quarterfinal round losing to Harvard in three games. Other bad teams that Yale lost to this year include : Clarkson, Cornell, Union, and St. Lawrence. Yale does not have a scorer with over 21 points as they spread their points around between their benders players. All the talk leading up to the game will be how Yale will play BU tough blah blah blah. The majority of the talk will be centered around the play of goalie Alex Lyon who sports a .936 save percentage. The only problem with this theory is that Yale has to score in order to win and I honestly don't think they are going to have too much success doing that. Now they can always get a bounce here or there but they are not going to generate regular scoring chances against this BU team. The biggest goal of this game will be the first one as Yale is 0-9-4 when trailing after any period and 2-7-3 when they give up the first goal of the game. BU, on the contrary, is 10-6-2 when giving up the first goal of the game and 15-1-3 when scoring first. If BU scores that first goal, it will force Yale to open up their defense more and take more chances as the game goes on. BU is also 17-0-0 when Eichel scores a goal so if BU scores the first goal or Eichel scores at all, this game is basically over. If Yale scores first, they have a chance..maybe I am predicting a 3-0 BU win and I'm basically always right so you should believe that.

Weekend Recap: Yawn, another championship on the good end of Comm Ave.

The 2014-2015 BU Terriers continue to fill up the trophy case at Agganis Arena. The Terriers swept UNH and UMass Lowell to destroy any hope for postseason hockey in the Merrimack Valley this season. Jack Eichel lead the Terriers with four goals over the two games. Friday night was not the best execution from the Terriers especially the top line but the bottom three lines chipped in 2 goals and the defense was great at denying quality chances for UNH who continues to live up to their University of No Hardware persona. The Terriers then jumped out to a 2-0 and 3-1 lead on UMass Lowell Saturday night and never looked back. Eichel's two goals were just taking the puck hard to the net and being better than his opponent. The Hockey East Championship was the 8th for BU and the first in the Quinn HC era(first since 2009). The Terriers now have won every possible trophy this season including Beanpot, Hockey East regular season, Hockey East Tournament, Coach of the Year, Player of the Year, Rookie of the year. The list goes on and on and Quinnie wanted it that way.

It was easy to feel confident in the Lowell matchup in the championship game as goaltending is their weakness and BU does not lose to teams with bad goaltending. They just don't. The only way this team has lost this season is if a goalie stands on his head. No deficit is insurmountable for this group which they have proved again and again(but not recently because they are always leading).It certainly is great to have both banners up in the TD Garden again.

Weekend Preview: Hockey East Finals Preview

David Quinn told a very funny joke this week. He said "If we play UNH 10 times, they would win 5 and we would in 5". I laughed about this hours later about what a funny joke he told.  Anyways, this is what I said last week when I was looking past  the scrimmages with Merrimack because they are terrible.

"UNH is unlikely to beat Providence this weekend but would be an ideal semifinal opponent for the Terriers. Even though they have already beaten the Terriers, it was in a game where BU spotted them a 4-0 lead and still almost won/ would have won with some good bounces going their way. The UNH goaltending situation has been stabilized by Danny Tirone but not enough to slow down BU's top line of three potential Hobey Baker Finalists." -me

                                                      Photo credit to the Boston Globe