The plate of momentum at hand is not big enough to be shared between the Cats and Dogs raring to lock twigs at Schneider Arena this Saturday.
Maybe it will be temporarily. But as the late George Carlin once said about a football clash, a playoff hockey game “is rigidly timed and it will end even if we have to go to sudden death.”
Translation: somebody will have to blink sometime, and the pain that comes with one team’s demise –at least as far as a crack at the Hockey East playoff title is concerned- will likely vary based on how soon somebody blinks. Because both Boston University and New Hampshire have made a healthy habit of gripping the upper hand once it is theirs.
This Saturday’s package –namely a passport to Sunday’s conference championship game- is ultimately for either party to gain, to be sure. The Wildcats and Terriers alike have been pulling together and snowballing favorable results in the climax of their respective seasons.
But if one team can somehow take manifest control in their Hockey East semifinal bout, which could mean as little as a two-goal edge, there is a fair chance there will be no looking back.
Both teams are 4-4 in one-goal decisions. And, as was proven in two of their three regular season encounters, they are perfectly capable of locking each other in a mutual stranglehold.
On the other hand, the Terriers are 11-4 in multi-goal games. The Wildcats are an even sharper 15-3.
BU is unbeaten (13-0-6) when leading after two periods, but winless (0-6-4) when trailing at the third period face-off. UNH is similarly 15-0-3 when safeguarding a lead after the second, but 4-7-1 when trailing or tied at that phase.
Translation: when either of these teams pull away, it is nearly impossible to lasso them back. Even when they are playing one another, as New Hampshire learned the hard way a month ago during BU’s last visit to the Whittemore Center.
Ever since the UNH defense imploded that day, Kayley Herman repelling half (no typo) of the eight shots she faced en route to a 5-2 loss, head coach Brian McCloskey has turned exclusively to Lindsey Minton. Ever since, the sophomore stopper has catalyzed a 4-1-0 run through the remainder of the regular season, coupling a 1.12 goals-against average with a celestial .950 save percentage.
In Minton’s lone prior confrontation with BU, last November 6 at Walter Brown Arena, she repelled 20 shots as part of a tight 4-3 triumph.
In addition to Minton, New Hampshire’s veteran scoring starlets, Kelly Paton and Micaela Long are, at the very worst, maintaining their same productivity rate in the peak moments of the season. The peerless playmaker Long has 10 assists to go with two goals while Paton has scraped out five goals and seven helpers in the Cats’ last five games.
But the top two scorers on the other bench have been just as sharp in the peak weeks. (And they have been backed by a much-improved defense that has allowed eight goals over its last seven games.)
For the Terriers, who are riding a 5-0-3 unbeaten streak since the start of February, senior center Melissa Anderson has appeared on each of the last five scoresheets and had at least one point in seven of eight February ventures. In that stretch, her only dry game was an altogether passionless exhibition they called the Beanpot consolation game. Regardless, her 11 points throughout the month were second only to the 14 aggregated by the Wildcats’ Paton.
In the same eight-game span, junior Lauren Cherewyk has grabbed four goal-assist value packs and charged up a 6-4-10 transcript overall. That’s a nightly median of 0.75 goals and 1.25 points after averaging 0.22 goals and 0.67 points in her first 27 games. Her active three-game production streak is the longest she has experienced since she notched five points in the first four games of the season.
Anderson and Cherewyk’s February upgrade is that much more commendable considering Jenelle Kohanchuk’s absence. Only now, the effects of Kohanchuk’s ailing thumb appear to have been overruled by an uncontrolled case of playoff fever. The slick sophomore turned heads in last week’s quarterfinal, suiting up and contributing four shots on net plus an assist en route to a 3-1 win over Boston College.
Terriers’ skipper Brian Durocher subsequently credited Kohanchuk’s presence for adding options to his game plan and gauged her at “65 to 70 percent” in the way of recovery. Imagine if she suits up again this weekend after having seven days to raise that percentage?
Well, UNH may have a counterpoint to that saga. Junior defender Courtney Birchard, missing for the last month due to her own ailment, may or may not re-emerge this weekend. If she did, she would inject a little can’t-hurt two-way proficiency.
Only this much can be filed under “safe bet”: this will not be a Xerox of the 8-0 drubbing laid down by the Wildcats when these teams tangled in the 2008 semifinals.
No comments:
Post a Comment