Less than a month to date, Boston College had facilely assumed its preseason position at second in Hockey East, but looked far from playoff-ready when it confronted the desperate likes of Maine and New Hampshire.
Over their last four conference games, sandwiching their Beanpot championship win over Harvard Feb. 15, the Eagles drew a cumulative 6-6 knot and charged up an iffy 1-1-2 record, their only win being their only game away from Conte Forum.
They conceded three of four points to the Black Bears, effectively pumping CPR into Maria Lewis’ pupils. They followed that up with a scoreless tie against the Wildcats to prop up UNH’s playoff bubble one more day.
Remember any of that? No worries if you don’t. Turns out that was just a combined case of ice-based end-of-the-year-itis and a little freshman frostbite that happened to warrant a mini-vacation from extramural engagements.
Perhaps the Eagles already knew that hiatus was coming. They had clinched second place on Feb. 6 and by the next weekend had nowhere higher or lower to go on the Hockey East leaderboard.
Or maybe they were getting a little genuinely fatigued and the perfectly competent supporting cast behind the otherworldly tandem of goalie Molly Schaus and striker Kelli Stack was low on fuel.
Either way, BC has restocked and is now primed to put in the program’s first Frozen Four appearance in four years. Odds are that would not have been the case if this team had someone and somewhere to play over the final weekend of February.
In its first three years of existence, the WHEA’s use of a six-team playoff field with two first round byes has reaped its share of positive and negative evidence. The 2008-09 Eagles finished an identical second behind the Wildcats, whom they met for the pennant and accompanied to the NCAA tournament.
Last season, indubitably the year of the league’s most indecisive playoff pool, the two byes succumbed to staleness in the semifinals as Connecticut and Boston University dislodged Providence and UNH, respectively.
This season’s tournament presented a mixture, at best. But the evidence tilts more soundly toward the byes being a well-earned reward.
On the surface, defending champion and first-place BU was bumped by its own rust. But remember that the Terriers charged up a 25-9 edge in the first period shooting gallery, led Northeastern 1-0 at the end of one, were tied after 40 minutes, and issued a 15-shot flurry in the closing frame.
BU’s semifinal upset loss was more easily explained by Huskies’ stopper Florence Schelling’s endurance in the cage and a comparative lack of big game experience for counterpart Kerrin Sperry. And at any rate, the loss didn’t dent the 26-6-4 Terriers’ position in the PairWise and they, too, are on their way to Erie this weekend.
Conversely, by giving the Zamboni a longer shift to resurface the calendar, their physical condition, and their psyche, the Eagles entered the postseason with their contender’s certificate dusted off.
In their last three games, including the program’s first Hockey East championship victory and second-ever NCAA quarterfinal win, the strike force has logged 10 goals on 124 shots. But more critically, key constituents have reheated their acetylene sticks, particularly some leaned-on rookies in Melissa Bizzari and Taylor Wasylk.
Ostensibly, those two were suffering from an excusable late-season letdown for the better part of January and February –except, as they have shown in the recent do-or-die games, they are not apt to accept excuses.
Wasylk, a yearlong contender for second-best freshman in the league behind BU’s Marie-Philip Poulin, had two points –a pair of sparsely doled out assists- in the last 12 games of the regular season. Yet on the other side of the two-week respite, she has tuned the mesh once in each Hockey East tournament game and taken a team-high five shots on goal in Saturday’s 4-1 quarterfinal triumph over Minnesota.
Bizzari was on a season-worst five-game cold spell until she scored both goals in the regular season finale at New Hampshire. She has since extended her season-best point streak to four games, charging up a 2-2-4 transcript over the postseason so far. Her most recent contribution was Saturday’s eventual game-winner, potted on the Eagles’ second shot of the game for a 2-0 lead with only 2:45 off the clock.
Prior to Bizzari’s strike, sophomore Ashley Motherwell charged up her first goal since Jan. 8, splashing a 15-game drought and spawning her first two-game point-getting streak since November. Leading up to the playoffs, Motherwell had thrice alternated between three pointless games and one assist. She now has a 1-2-3 log her last two outings.
Even junior Danielle Welch was tapering off in the stretch. She mustered but one goal in the last six regular season outings and was wholly barren in the final three. But she now enters the Frozen Four on the heels of back-to-back multi-point games, going 1-1-2 and scoring the clincher in the Hockey East title tilt, then assisting on both of Stack’s strikes against the Gophers.
Stack and Schaus might not have needed the breather as badly as their understudies, but they were not going to singlehandedly pilot BC this far. And they haven’t. They have headlined a team stocked with solid sidebars, just as they did for the first three-plus months of the season, when the Eagles consistently hovered in safe at-large bid territory.
Plead what you will either way, based on your team’s experience with this three-year-old format. But this BC team was patently built to benefit from the bye.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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