Unlike the program she has represented since its 2005 inception, Boston University forward Laurel Koller’s transcript has not exactly ascended from the promise she blazed as a freshman.
Koller led the Terriers’ inaugural installment with 13 goals and 28 points, then exercised a medical red shirt option when a neck injury idled her for the 2006-07 season. Her loss of traction was such that, with her shorthanded goal 58 seconds into Saturday’s second period, she upped her senior totals to 6-7-13, her best year since before her injury.
But that goal also proved the game winner as BU subsisted on the 1-0 lead she planted for the next 32 minutes and 46 seconds. From there, the Terriers sprinkled on three layers of insurance to cement a 4-0 triumph over New Hampshire and set up a date with Connecticut in Sunday’s Hockey East championship tilt at Schneider Arena.
Koller might be a far cry from the prolific point-getter she might have been sans the sophomore injury. Then again, without it, she ultimately would not have extended her stay in the Hub long enough to partake in the Terriers’ first crack at a WHEA pennant.
“It’s fantastic,” said head coach Brian Durocher, who last spring bid adieu to nine out of his 10 inaugural recruits after falling ice chips short in a 3-2 semifinal loss to Boston College.
“Laurel is one of these people who has worked really hard to build up her endurance and her conditioning,” Durocher continued. “She went an entire season last year without scoring a goal and yet she was a very intricate part of our team, a fantastic two-way player. She’s picked up a new role this year killing penalties, she’s played quite a bit on the power play, so it was really fantastic for her to get rewarded for that.”
“Rewarded” was not exactly an operative term for the bulk of Saturday’s contest. The second-seeded Wildcats owned the shooting gallery in a scoreless opening frame, 7-3, but the Terriers could have been much closer in that department, maybe even ahead on the scoreboard, had they not spilled two full-length power plays.
UNH was no more fruitful when it finally had a Terrier in the bin, beginning with Melissa Anderson’s tripping minor with 53 seconds to spare in the first period. Even with a carry-over opportunity an 68 seconds to work with on a fresh sheet, Brian McCloskey’s power play brigade could not get anything on BU stopper Melissa Haber’s property.
And 10 seconds before Anderson’s jailbreak, Koller converted on the first shot taken at either end in the period, thrusting it in from between the inner hash marks. From there, even if it took its sweet time showing up on the board, the Terriers’ momentum gradually ascended.
From McCloskey’s standpoint, that was no more conspicuous than at the 9:08 mark of the middle frame. Already engaged in 4-on-4 action by virtue of coincidental roughing minors to Haber and Shannon Sisk, Kelly Cahill pinned BU backchecker Kacey Boucher from behind in the far corner.
Cahill thus pinned a five-minute major and game misconduct on herself and an extra pound of burden on her teammates, who were already lacking the services of two-way connoisseur Courtney Birchard and were getting next to nothing done in the attacking zone.
McCloskey, who termed a possible return on Birchard’s part for next week’s NCAA regional “doubtful,” added “No team is a one player team, but losing (Birchard) is like losing Paton. Players of that magnitude are just difficult to replace or cover for.”
“Kelly Cahill, I feel bad for her,” he continued. “She was just a little too aggressive.”
Yet the Terriers returned a small enough amount of the favor in the form of an aggressive power play. They not only failed to shoot for the duration of that five-minute, all-you-can-score buffet. But they also deleted two minutes from that segment when Tara Watchorn was flagged for interference at 9:20, amounting to 13 seconds of 3-on-3 action.
Thus the suspense lived on through another Zamboni shift, at which point UNH still led a fairly light shot count, 11-10.
But once Britt Hergesheimer buried the first insurance goal with 6:16 to spare in the third, finishing off a class blue collar net crash that had the puck dripping home behind goaltender Lindsey Minton’s back, the Terriers all but deployed the boa constrictor.
Anderson added the next two insurance goals, the first by absorbing Lauren Cherewyk’s forward shipment and curling it in around the right side of a discombobulated Minton with 3:49 left and the last on a shorthanded empty netter with 31.7 ticks remaining.
And after Hergsheimer’s goal, Haber only needed to handle three sparsely distributed stabs from the Wildcats to complete the first shutout anyone has laid on UNH this season.
“The biggest thing for me was just the team winning,” insisted Haber, who aggregated 17 saves and twice was backed by the goalpost on a couple of bids by opposing first-liner Micaela Long. “The shutout wasn’t going through my mind. I didn’t know that, so that feels good.”
Even McCloskey, whose team parted with a four-year pennant dynasty and will sit out the league championship for only the second time in eight years, admitted he had a few items to take comfort in.
After all, where his team is currently positioned, they ought to have no trouble landing an at-large bid to the Elite Eight. And he knows his league can only cultivate more interest with Sunday’s matchup, which will end in one team getting its first WHEA playoff crown and one –maybe even two, albeit by a long shot- putting in its first appearance on the national bracket.
“We had a few bright spots,” McCloskey concluded. “(And) it’ll be exciting to finally crown a new champion.”
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