During a midweek media call on Thursday, Tara Watchorn made an important distinction regarding her Boston University women’s hockey team.
In the regular season, No. 14 BU won more games than it had won since before the pandemic and collected more Hockey East points since, well, ever. But on the four occasions the Terriers played for a trophy, they squandered every one, including a disastrous three-game stretch to conclude the season that cost them the conference regular season title.
“It’s about learning how to win big games,” Watchorn said. “We know what this team’s capable of, and there’s so much to be proud of — how we’ve brought this team back to where it should be.”
“But it’s a whole different type of winning when it’s high pressure, high stress.”
It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but the Terriers finally got over that hurdle in the Hockey East quarterfinal on Saturday evening, defeating pesky Vermont, 4-3, in overtime at Walter Brown Arena. It was the program’s first playoff victory since the 2018-19 season.
Junior Riley Walsh, a transfer from Union, sat in traffic in the slot and fired home the winner at 3:59 of overtime. She skated down the ice and whipped out the “heartbreaker” celebration as she was mobbed by teammates.
Trailing 3-2 with 10 minutes to go in the third period, junior forward Sydney Healey scored her team-leading 14th goal of the year, placing a perfect stick on a shot from Maeve Kelly to tip the puck past Vermont goalie Sydney Correa.
That came after junior forward Lilli Welcke had tied the game late in the first period on a similar play, her deft stick poking a Riley Walsh shot through Correa’s five-hole to make it 2-2.
BU repped pressure situations in practice all week, with a heightened focus on goal-scoring, because as Healey said, “in those high-pressure situations, we need a goal.” In an elimination game on Saturday, the Terriers scored four goals, as many as they had scored across all four regular-season games they played with a trophy to win.
Despite the victory, BU will have plenty to look at — specifically, how eighth-seeded Vermont managed to take the second-seeded Terriers to overtime.
Vermont scored twice on five shots on goal in the opening frame, both goals giving the visitors the lead. Coming in, the Catamounts had only scored multiple goals in 14 games this season — less than half of their total — but after 10 minutes at Walter Brown, they’d already lit the lamp twice.
Freshman forward Oona Havana opened the scoring six minutes in, rifling a sudden wrister off a face-off past senior goalie Callie Shanahan for only her third collegiate goal. It seemed that Shanahan didn’t see the shot coming through traffic; she slid over to the right side of her crease to save a shot that found the top left corner.
Three minutes later, sophomore Rose-Marie Brochu regained the Cats’advantage, forcing a one-timer through Shanahan from the doorstep. BU sophomore Alex Law had attempted to break out of the defensive zone by herself, but failed, leaving the Terriers vulnerable.
Both of those goals — even if BU could’ve done more to stop them — were significantly against the run of play, during a period in which the Terriers dominated from start to finish. BU had 17 shots on goal in the opening frame and 32 total shot attempts. These were legitimate chances, too; Correa had her hands full.
Junior defender Maeve Kelly tied the game at 1-1 on a wrister that cleanly beat Correa through traffic at 8:28, then Welcke equalized again with 28 seconds left in the period.
Watchorn said on Thursday it would be important for the Terriers to dominate possession of the puck, and BU followed the game plan for the entire period.
The problem was that the Terriers got away from it after the first intermission. In a scoreless second, Vermont recorded nine shots on goal to BU’s six (total shot attempts were 16-13 in favor of the Cats). For some reason, the Terriers couldn’t sustain possession in the offensive zone like they did in the first, and the game descended into a track meet — exactly what BU needed to avoid.
The Terriers, put simply, were outplayed in the frame.
Then, they conceded 4:37 into the third period, as Vermont captain Maddy Skelton fired into a wide-open net on the power play after Shanahan was stranded out of position. It was yet another goal BU’s vaunted penalty kill has conceded down the stretch of the season.
But with their season hanging in the balance, the Terriers dominated the rest of the way, eventually peppering 46 shots on Correa, compared to the 16 Shanahan faced. Total shot attempts finished 85-29 in favor of BU.
