With model men’s program right at home, Eagles draw easy inspiration
By Al Daniel
Jerry York –whose skating students over in the men’s sector of Conte Forum have played in seven of the 13 most recent NCAA championship games, including four of the past five, and won two of the last three- took a rare breather from his demanding duties on Sunday.
The Boston College men’s hockey coach was on hand at Walter Brown Arena for the Women’s Hockey East championship, visiting the NESN broadcast booth for an in-game interview on his team and lending support to its female counterparts.
Hardly a surprise to any ice addicts who bleed maroon and gold and never tire of hearing those brass renditions of “For Boston.”
“The men’s program at BC is unbelievable,” said women’s skipper Katie King. “And to us, they’re so supportive from the coaches to the players to everyone involved in that program.
“They’ve been extremely supportive of us and do everything they can to help us out. They want to see us succeed, which is great, and we want to see them succeed.”
York, less than 24 hours removed from clinching his league’s regular season laurel, was in midsentence with TV commentators Tom Caron and AJ Mleczko when Danielle Welch drilled home a dagger at 5:59 of the third period, ultimately finalizing the BC women’s 3-1 triumph over Northeastern.
Between two Beanpots and the aforementioned first-place finish in the men’s conference, that was the aggregate fourth hunk of hardware awarded to a BC hockey team this season. All-time, in the 27 years of Hockey East history (only nine, of course, for the women’s version), it makes for a combined 10 conference playoff titles at Chestnut Hill.
No other institution fielding both a men’s and women’s program has cracked double digits under that heading. Crossroad rival Boston University is a relatively close second with seven men’s laurels and one women’s pennant.
Naturally, King’s pupils are still a far cry from equating their live-in brothers’ enriched standards. But right now, both flocks of Eagles like to believe that they are soaring in tandem above most, if not all, of their conference cohabitants.
“We definitely want to create the history that they have,” said King. “We want to try to match what they have. It’ll take a couple of years, but we want to try to do what they do. Our kids are great friends with them and they hang out all the time.”
There was a previous hint of dual dominance by all the BC icers in 2006-07. That year, York guided his capstone class to its second straight national title game while the women reached their first Frozen Four in the program’s then-13-year history.
Celestial scorer and stopper Kelli Stack and Molly Schaus were freshmen that season. And their advanced stats –a 17-37-54 scoring transcript for Stack and 1.90 goals-against average and .931 save percentage for Schaus- hinted at nothing but overwhelming acceleration in the three years to come.
But in those next three years, two developments, one wholly unsavory and another half-full, impeded the BC women’s consistency. The revolutionary class of 2010 experienced the ultimate sophomore slide as the team regressed in 2007-08 to a 14-13-7 record, its worst since its last losing year in 2004-05.
The elastic Eagles rebounded, took silver in the conference playoffs, and returned to the NCAA’s Elite Eight in 2009. But then –surprise, surprise- USA Hockey’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Skates called upon Schaus and Stack to replenish much of the blood lost from 2006. With their offensive and defensive faces on the Olympic tour all year, the Eagles receded once more last season, finishing sixth in the league and submitting to eventual playoff champion BU in the quarterfinal.
But just as conspicuous as they were by their absence, Schaus and Stack have used their belated senior season to rapidly restore the bite in their college team’s talons. And with Sunday’s landmark victory, they have set the long-elusive precedent for their successors.
“We were just getting on the map the year before I came here,” said Stack. “I think we’ve improved every year since then. We’ve gotten some great recruits, so that’s definitely helped us out a lot. I think a lot of girls hockey players are going to want to come to BC now.”
Ironically, while the women sandwiched a rebound year with those two mediocre finishes, the men soaked in two national titles in 2008 and 2010, but in between lumbered through a hangover campaign in 2008-09, an indubitable anomaly for York’s proud program.
But now, once more, the Conte Forum pucksters of both genders are simultaneously certified contenders. York’s pupils, No. 1-ranked for the better part of the year, are an absolute lock for their national dance, which will commence one weekend after the women’s Frozen Four in Erie, Pa.
First, though, they have a jealously guarded reputation on the line as they seek to defend the Lamoriello Trophy. If they do that, it would be the first time one school has claimed both the men’s and women’s Hockey East championship in the same year.
The men’s quest will begin this weekend, concomitant with the women’s drive for their first national title.
The itinerary for the Chestnut Hill ice house is as follows: the men host Game 1 of their best-of-three quarterfinal set with UMass-Amherst at 7 p.m. Friday. Saturday will be a double-header as the women host Minnesota at 1:00, followed by Game 2 of the men’s series at 7:00. And, if necessary, Game 3 with the Minutemen on Sunday: same time, same pond.
And if all goes according to their plan, come the weekend of March 18-20, BC buffs will be torn between the option of staying home for and taking their spirit down a quick train route to TD Garden or venturing out on a road trip to Erie’s Tullio Arena.
“We’re happy we can bring home a (Hockey East) championship,” said King. “And hopefully (the men) do the same in a couple of weeks.”
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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