Providence, R.I.- In the regular season, Boston University senior goaltender Melissa Haber had stopped 11 out of 12 shots in a cumulative 45:19 of overtime action spaced over 10 games. Of those 10 occasions, she had won one, lost one, and helped to salvage eight ties.
Surely, therefore, she had to be one of, if not the most composed constituent of either team when Sunday’s Hockey East title tilt with Connecticut spilled over into a fourth period, right?
“I think we sort of knew what overtime is like,” said Haber, whose Terriers had gone to a bonus round a total of 14 times in 34 regular season games, going 1-1-12 in that scenario.
“I think (the prior experience) did help us, but this is a championship game, so obviously it’s going to be a little bit different. But we have gone down that road before. I think we were all confident and everybody on the team just really wanted this.”
What they wanted was what they got. After Haber (25 saves) repelled five shots by the Huskies over the first nine minutes of a back-and-forth overtime, she collected tournament MVP accolades after teammate Tara Watchorn drilled home the clinching goal at the 9:52 mark, finalizing a 2-1 Terrier triumph at Schneider Arena.
Watchorn’s winner, which was BU’s seventh OT stab at UConn goalie Alex Garcia (31 saves), was a gale-force blast from the center point on a puck that nearly went offside. As the Huskies tried to clear the zone, she swooped in to halt the biscuit on the blue line and leveled a snap shot past a forest of scrambling bodies and over Garcia’s right shoulder.
“For this time in a game and how tired I was, I think I got a lot on it,” said Watchorn, one of only six Terriers not to have recorded a shot on goal leading up to her spontaneous decider.
With the win, which granted the five-year-old program its first conference playoff crown and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, BU garnered the final seed in the Elite Eight, pitting it against almighty Mercyhurst this Saturday for the quarterfinal. Meanwhile, there proved to be no room in the bracket for the bubble-bound Huskies, who were in a three-way tie for sixth place with the likes of Clarkson and Cornell but ultimately drew the shortest straw in Sunday evening’s tournament selection.
Not unlike her semifinal victims, the host Providence Friars, Huskies’ head coach Heather Linstad concluded that her team dropped its delicate NCAA viability by way of an iffy first period. The Terriers charged up a 10-6 edge in the shooting gallery, induced UConn starting center Monique Weber to near back-to-back bodychecking penalties, and nabbed a 1-0 lead on the first of those resulting power plays.
Less than one minute into Weber’s first two-minute sentence, and with 13:33 gone in the game, BU defender Kathryn Miller went out of her way to sneak down to the back door, where she lassoed a rebound left by Jenelle Kohanchuk and roofed it into the far slab of the cage.
Only 22 seconds later, Weber was flagged again for the same infraction, complicating the Huskies’ hopes of a rapid response.
Although, in the second period, everything evened out as UConn posted an identical 10-6 advantage on the shot clock, drew the only power play of the period (BU’s Britt Hergesheimer for bodychecking at 8:48) and scored the only goal. At the 6:50 mark, Weber let a long-range wrister out of the near alley bank off of Haber’s sweater. When Haber couldn’t get a handle on it, Michelle Binning majestically darted in and made a tumbling conversion on the rebound.
“I thought we were very flat in the first period. We kind of gave away 20 minutes,” said Linstad. “But I thought we played better after that. We got things going, and we had some unbelievable scoring opportunities and the BU goalie kept us at bay.
“Overall, I think we played well for 40 minutes, but obviously we didn’t set the tempo that we wanted.”
Nor would they get a whole upper hand on the Terriers, who in the third period doubled up on the Huskies under the SOG heading, 10-5. And although it would take them another seven swings at the puck and nearly 10 extra minutes of play, they would ultimately renew their lead for good.
“I think in the third period,” said BU skipper Brian Durocher, “we looked like we had a few chances to close it out, but those kids just have unbelievable fight and they stuck to their game plan and made life tough. They got a little momentum going right before we scored that goal, and fortunately, we had one (shot) that had eyes and found the top corner.”
BU, now 17-8-12 on the year, was once a bottom feeder in the ways of defense, discipline, and penalty killing. And the Terriers briefly lost their grip on a national ranking when they failed to stamp two consecutive victories more than once up through the end of January, at which point they stood at 10-8-9.
Yet now, they have won six games in a row, gone 7-0-2 in their last nine ventures, and allowed two goals or fewer in each of those nine games.
In addition to the benefit of toiling through so many sudden death scenarios, Durocher said, “The other thing that I clearly think is helping us from the neck up is the fact that we haven’t lost in February and, now, early March. Early in the year, we were finding ways to turn wins into ties and not really getting on any type of a roll.
“And all of a sudden now, we’re going out there and feeling pretty good in the third period and even when UConn got a little bit of a rush in the OT, Melissa made a couple of saves, some people got in the way and blocked some shots, and we were fortunate enough to get some mustard on a shot that was getting to be at a tiring point in the game.”
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