Boston University 4, Mercyhurst 2 (first edition)

In a most timely fashion, the Boston University Terriers upgraded their recent one-woman show in Jenn Wakefield while handing that injudicious role over to Mercyhurst’s Meghan Agosta.

Heading into Saturday’s NCAA regional tilt, Wakefield had scored five of her team’s past six goals in a sketchy 1-2-0 run, including BU’s first pair of successive losses all season.

Through 20 minutes, surprise, surprise, the score was as good as Wakefield 1, Agosta 1. More pressingly, the visiting Lakers had deleted an initial 1-0 deficit, were leading the shooting gallery by a crushing count of 15-4, and arguably had better looks shorthanded than BU had on the first period’s only power play.

“We have to have a second wave behind Jenn,” said Terriers’ head coach Brian Durocher. “I still think a lot of our offense comes from our six defenders who pass the puck well, shoot the puck well, make plays. But when you have a couple of premier players who can play on different lines, can help other people score, other people have to score.

“If we were going to go on today, someone else had to score.”

It finally happened at 8:16 of the middle frame, when Agosta’s Vancouver Olympic teammate, Marie-Philip Poulin renewed the Terrier lead. And while Agosta drew another knot in the third, it took a mere 110 seconds for Jill Cardella to thaw out her own frostbitten twig with 9:04 to spare in regulation.

Cardella’s strike, followed by a Wakefield empty netter, cemented a gritty 4-2 win that pole-vaulted BU into its first Women’s Frozen Four in the program’s six years of existence.

“You can go back to almost any of the kids that started this program,” said Durocher. “There was a lot of character kids. Now we’ve added a whole bunch of character kids the place has become a bit more hockey-attractive, which has brought even better players here.

“But we have to be a blue-collar team. I believe this game is a blue-collar game, and today you saw it firsthand. Mercyhurst had an eight or 10-shot advantage, but we had people blocking shots, diving it front of it. And it was the third-line checkers. It was the big-name players who were doing it.”

BU ultimately charged up more blocked shots (29) than it did stabs at Lakers’ goaltender Hillary Pattenden’s cage (22). Meanwhile, Agosta, the first female NCAA puckster with more than 300 career points, took more than twice as many SOG as any of her teammates, including half of their dozen in the closing frame.

But the Terriers, who decisively carried the play for only one period (a 14-5 shooting edge in the second) found one more seam, plus a brownie, to knock off the 2011 Frozen Four host.