BOSTON — After Thursday’s 5-2 loss to UConn in the Hockey East semifinal, Jay Pandolfo got straight to the point.
“That was a good old-fashioned ass-kicking,” the head coach said. “That’s what that was.”
Pandolfo sternly walked the media through what went wrong for the Boston University men’s hockey team, before Huskies head coach Mike Cavanaugh sat stress-free at the postgame press conference — enough to worry about the safety of his daughter.
“My daughter was driving from Connecticut to Boston for the first time,” he said. “She made it here safely, thank God.”
It was just that kind of afternoon for the No. 8 Terriers (21-13-2). From the drop of the puck, the No. 7 Huskies (22-10-4) outplayed BU. Thursday’s contest at TD Garden looked a lot like the Terriers in the first half of the season, when Pandolfo was routinely critiquing BU’s effort.
“Outcompeted, outbattled for every puck, outbattled on the wall, outbattled in the slot,” Pandolfo said.
BU struggled to generate offense at even strength — a problem it’s had before against top competition — until a push late in the third period.
The Terriers were poor through the neutral zone, Pandolfo said, and “a big reason” why they struggled at 5-on-5 was because they “weren’t willing to put pucks behind them.”
“They do a good job trying to outnumber you in the offensive zone, and we didn’t win enough puck battles there,” Pandolfo said.
The Terriers took a 1-0 lead on Quinn Hutson’s 21st goal of the season in the first period but fell behind in an especially trying second period. The Huskies sustained offensive zone time, forechecking hard, and the Terriers struggled to break the puck out.
“We were trying to keep them out of the middle of the ice,” Cavanaugh said.
UConn was successful in keeping BU on the perimeter, but the “real reason” that the Huskies were able to shut down the Terriers was because UConn was “playing down in their end,” he added.
UConn evened the score 59 seconds into the second period when junior forward Tristan Fraser buried his own rebound to make it 1-1.
Junior forward Ryan Tattle gave the Huskies the lead at 2:56 on a breakaway, and sophomore forward Joey Muldowney made it 3-1 at 8:42 of the second. Muldowney backhanded the puck past freshman Mikhail Yegorov from a sharp angle after Yegorov made a sprawling save on the initial shot.
“That stretch in the second period for the first 10 minutes, I thought that was probably some of the best hockey we’ve played all year long,” Cavanaugh said.
Yegorov stopped 19 of the 23 shots he faced on Thursday, and freshman Callum Tung stopped 25 of 27. Tung was excellent as the Terriers made a push late, outshooting UConn 13-3 in the third period.
Muldowney’s second tally of the game pushed the UConn lead to 4-1 at 5:04 of the third period. He pushed the puck past Yegorov off a feed from sophomore forward Jake Richard. He completed the hat trick at 16:12, finding the back of the empty net.
“They really skate,” Pandolfo said.
Freshman forward Kamil Bednarik cut the Huskies’ lead to 5-2 with 10 seconds left in regulation, his first goal since Nov. 30. He redirected a shot from sophomore blueliner Aiden Celebrini.
The good news for BU, as Pandolfo put it, is that the Terriers will play at least another game. They now await their fate, as the bracket for the NCAA tournament will be released on Sunday at 3 p.m.
But Pandolfo is certain of one thing.
“If our guys want to play the way we did tonight at the regionals, I don’t think we’re gonna like the result.”
BU has looked much improved in the second half, cutting out its bad habits. But Thursday’s uninspiring performance comes at a critical point of the season.
“If it happens again, the season’s over,” Pandolfo said. “I don’t know how many lessons this group needs.”
