This is as close as women’s college hockey is going to get to a multi-game playoff series. The key difference now is that it will be up to both teams to force a fifth and deciding meeting.
Boston College and Boston University met for the fourth time this season Tuesday night in Round I of the 2011 Beanpot. With a 2-1 win, the host Eagles unofficially tied the season series at two apiece.
And this comes only days after it became official that the only way these newfangled archrivals will be able to cross paths again is if they do it in the Hockey East championship game. Over this past weekend, the Comm. Ave. cohabitants clinched the league’s two first round byes and will now spend the next two weeks racing for the right to host the tournament.
With all due respect to the rest of the league –who no doubt can bank on winning a little admiration if they pull a surprise or two next month- the notion of a BC-BU bout with the pennant on the line has done nothing but grow exponentially enticing.
Tuesday’s 2-1 decision, on the strength of Eagles’ veteran strikers Kelli Stack and Mary Restuccia exchanging a goal and assist, had far less to do with the absence of BU’s radiant rookie Marie-Philip Poulin than it did with BC’s urge to get even. Not only had they lost the better half of the three-game regular season wishbone, which we see is a direct cause of their trailing the Terriers by one point in the standings. But in two previous visits from the Terriers, they had failed to light their own lamp once in 120 total minutes.
They splashed that drought with three seconds left till the first intermission as Restuccia converted Stack’s pass to beat BU freshman goaltender Kerrin Sperry. Afterward, the Eagles’ leaned heavily on their celestial senior stopper, Molly Schaus, as the Terriers ran up a 26-7 edge in the shooting gallery over the final 40 minutes.
Schaus, who previously lost a 1-0 staring contest to her fellow Assabet Valley product prior Thanksgiving, only blinked once Tuesday night. And that was only after Stack had packed a dollop of insurance with 5:36 gone in the third.
Of the 34 shots BU lobbed at Schaus, Holly Lorms’ bid at 6:13 of the closing frame was the only one to find a home.
Accordingly, we have now seen a little bit of everything work for each side in this matchup. Sperry had her turn –twice, no less- salting Stack’s path, stopping all five of her shots in a 4-0 win at Conte Forum Jan. 15. On Tuesday, Schaus repelled all seven shots from the Terriers’ topmost scoring veteran, Jenn Wakefield.
That indubitably served to rinse out a little of the vinegar that Wakefield force-fed Schaus in the aforementioned Jan. 16 game, wherein she had a hand in all four goals. Both Wakefield and Poulin –who is immutably ingrained in Schaus and Stack’s mind after inserting both goals for Team Canada in its Olympic triumph over Team USA last year- have had two multi-point games apiece at Chestnut Hill in their first year at BU.
Likewise, Stack had fun piloting the Eagles to a 6-3 win at Walter Brown Arena Nov. 20, nailing a hat trick. Restuccia stoked that barn-burner with a playmaker hat trick while junior Danielle Welch and sophomore Ashley Motherwell each snagged a goal-assist value pack.
All right, maybe that makes one area where one party can claim without dispute that it feels unfulfilled. The Eagles finally surmounted the Terriers at their place, but BU is 0-1 in home games against BC. For that reason, they will surely want to avoid any missteps at all cost and lock away the Hockey East regular season crown.
But then again, regardless of which side of Comm. Ave. is hosting the title game –and assuming these two heavyweights ward off all upset bids- the Eagles, but especially Schaus and Stack, have their own void to plug. Since enrolling in 2006, the program’s pioneer scorer and stopper have wasted no time making their immortal tracks in the form of countless individual accolades, obliterated team and league records, two NCAA tournament bids, and being BC’s first two Olympic ambassadors.
For all that, Schaus, Stack, and the rest of the BC program are lacking what the Terriers already chalked up for the first time last March.
Odds are, they will have to address that by plowing through the defending champs, which they can only do on March 6.
And even if an outsider does crash the Comm. Ave. party, both the Terriers and Eagles –ranked third and sixth, respectively, in the PairWise rankings- should have enough collateral to earn an at-large bid. No need to rule out a Super Bowl-esque Game 5 on the neutral pond of Tullio Arena in Erie, is there?
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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