There is no way of knowing for certain what Boston University head coach Brian Durocher said to his pupils Thursday night after they let a program-best 13-game winning streak wilt at the hands of New Hampshire. And we can speculate with at least an ice chip of doubt as to the tone of his postgame lecture.
If Durocher were only as rational and knowledgeable as the average spectator, it goes without saying what his reaction would have been to his Terriers spilling a 3-0 deficit in the first 40 minutes and thrusting 54 total shots at Wildcat stopper Kayley Herman, only to extract two belated goals in the third en route to a 4-2 loss.
But as evidenced by his subsequent address to the Walter Brown Arena press corps, which was stamped for public viewing on the BU athletics’ YouTube channel, he came off as anything but exasperated, distraught, or panicked.
“I don’t think every night you’re going to be perfect,” Durocher said in an understanding tone.
He added that, during the now-defunct hot streak, “I think we’ve been really, really prepared for 11-and-a-half or 12 of them. And I don’t talk about preparation from the coaches. I talk about preparation that we’re ready to go, we warmed up, we respected our opponent.
“Maybe a little bit of that wasn’t there tonight, but sometimes bounces don’t go your way. I think (the shot count in the first period) was 12-3 and then they got one that had eyes, and it’s 1-0. That’s a small lead, but it’s a lead that counts in hockey sometimes.”
Incidentally, the 2010-11 Terriers have practically majored in the gripping art of spotting the opposition first blood, only to swiftly delete and surmount the deficit. Before Thursday’s 4-2 loss, they had gone 7-2-3 when authorizing the first goal, and only in their three losing efforts have they trailed by multiple tallies or been stung by the red light more than thrice in a game.
Yet Durocher was hardly fazed by Thursday’s unprecedented slip, and why should he be? After all, this was only the Terriers’ third loss in 27 twirls this season. Even if they spilled two games in a row, even against a club that is patently inferior to them all over the sheet, there would still be no cause to pull a Joe “We’re losing!” McGrath.
In fact, were he to take the tornadic route, Durocher would likely steer his students on an undue detour to cracked confidence.
Durocher obviously understands that, given the regal cushion the Terriers have stuffed for themselves, the adverse repercussions of a single night like Thursday are somewhere between negligible and nonexistent. At 21-3-3 overall and 11-2-3 in the league, they are still in a position to wrap up the regular season championship in Hockey East and an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. And odds are they will be home for regionals.
And BU will have earned all of that, assuming it continues to utilize its assortment of resources in the climax of the pennant race just as it has since October.
It still has the nation’s last unbeaten goaltender in Kerrin Sperry –who was given a breather Thursday in favor of Alissa Fromkin. It still has five of the league’s top 10 point-getters. It still has three double-digit goal-scorers in Marie-Philip Poulin, Jenn Wakefield, and Jillian Kirchner, with Jenelle Kohanchuk and Holly Lorms within striking distant of the same elite group. It still has a peerlessly prolific blue line that tends to still do its day job with enviable efficiency.
And it still ranks among the nation’s top five in terms of offense, defense, power play, and penalty killing.
If anything, it’s for the better that the roundly braced Terriers expelled a little hiccup here and now. In fact, they have done themselves and the other Hockey East contenders a favor by exposing the full extent of the bedraggled Wildcats’ fighting spirit. And they learned what can happen, even to the heaviest of favorites, if you do not go all out oppress that spirit.
“We were maybe taking it for granted that something was going to happen,” Durocher said.
Odds are they won’t be quite so presumptuous going forward, especially not in Part II of this home-and-home series at the Whittemore Center on Saturday.
Wakefield, who discharged a team-leading 11 SOG Thursday but had nothing to show for it, is returning to her old domain and will no doubt want to justify her decision to transfer out of Brian McCloskey’s capstone project. And Sperry should be back in the crease with fresher legs and a fresher mind than usual.
If they merely apply those along with all of the usual elements, the Terriers should have no trouble restoring normalcy in a clean hurry. And they will continue to nudge within tasting distance of the right to defend their Hockey East crown on their own pond.
Like any good contenders’ coach, Durocher knows all this. Surely, he would have preferred more assertion on Thursday, but his team can afford to move on without any missing conviction. Maybe now, they’ll check to ensure they are not playing with excess confidence.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond the Dashers
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