STORRS, Conn. — One by one, they skated over to Mikahil Yegorov, who stood frozen in his crease, and offered an embrace.
When Cole Hutson was finished hugging his goaltender, he skated away, dropping his hands to his knees, and looked out across the ice after what was surely his final NCAA game. Cole Eiserman found Hutson. The two best friends embraced, shedding tears. They may never play on the same team again.
“The final score — UConn 5, Boston University 3!” the public address announcer at Toscano Family Ice Forum boomed. BU’s season was over, 28 days earlier than everyone on the team had hoped.
Standing off to the side as UConn’s players celebrated advancing to TD Garden with friends and family in the arena’s foyer, head coach Jay Pandolfo reflected on his fourth season at the helm.
“It was a tough year for me,” he said. “I don’t think I did a good enough job.”
BU’s season will — and should — be labeled a disappointment. The Terriers stumbled to the finish line unranked with a 17-17-2 record after entering the year ranked No. 2 and as a popular bet to win the national championship.
Pandolfo explained that early in the season he didn’t get the youngest team in college hockey to understand what it takes to win. It’s unfair, he said, to expect a roster full of 18- and 19-year-olds to already know how to prepare and play the right way.
“The message has to be constant and I don’t think I did a good enough job,” he said.
What BU lacked in polish on Saturday, it didn’t lack in fight, which rang true until the final buzzer sounded. Despite making “too many costly mistakes,” as Pandolfo put it, the Terriers punched back. But that’s what’s frustrating about BU’s season — time and time again, the Terriers simply didn’t show up. The last regular season game against UMass Lowell is the starkest example: with a first-round bye on the line, they fell flat against a beatable opponent in a crucial matchup.
That wasn’t the case on Saturday. BU fought until the clock struck zero; it just couldn’t mask its mistakes in the end.
Every Husky goal was the result of either a turnover, missed coverage, or the Terriers’ inability to clear their defensive zone, but each time, there BU was, pushing right back.
When the Terriers were down 1-0, Tynan Lawrence intercepted a dump-in and sprang free to tie the game. Down 2-1, Charlie Tretheway made a goal-saving block. Then Jack Murtagh — playing one of his best games of the season — refused to give up on a loose puck and converted, knotting it at two. Down 4-2 in the third — a situation in which BU had folded all season — Ben Merrill chased down a loose puck, weaved through the neutral zone, cut in, and scored to pull his team back within one.
Saturday’s Terriers weren’t the team that had grossly underperformed all season. They lost a close game to a quality opponent because of costly errors — not because they quit.
“Our guys fought all the way to the end,” he said.
The 36th and final game of the season offered a glimpse of what this team could have been — and that’s its own kind of sting. A roster this talented, playing with this much fight, could have made something of this year. Instead, it became a footnote.
Even in the waning moments, the Terriers’ bench was positive, said Pandolfo. That’s why the emotions poured out all at once when BU’s fate was sealed.
When Hutson and Eiserman finally left the ice, they left together — in all likelihood, for the last time.