It’s fair to wonder where the Boston University men’s hockey team goes from here. “Here” is a 3-2 home loss to Vermont, and the distinction of becoming the first team this season to surrender three goals to the Catamounts.
The Terriers, who now sit at a measly 8-8-1, had salvaged their NPI ranking to 27th after beating Cornell at Madison Square Garden and moved up to 25th after squeaking past Vermont on Friday. But after Saturday’s defeat, BU stumbled back down to 33rd.
The prospect of an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament continues to fade, leaving the Terriers needing to win the Hockey East tournament to keep their hopes for the program’s elusive sixth national championship alive.
Not even two months ago, in Oct. 13’s USCHO poll, BU held the top spot. Now, after falling at home to a 5-9-0 Catamounts team, the Terriers will likely fall out of the top 20 for the first time under head coach Jay Pandolfo.
This calls for a State of the Union address. As Pandolfo has said on multiple occasions this season, “How much time do you have?”
A depleted forward group doesn’t excuse offensive woes
The injury bug has fully consumed BU upfront through 17 games. Eight forwards — Nick Roukounakis, Sacha Boisvert, Conrad Fondrk, Jack Murtagh, Owen McLaughlin, Ben Merrill, Cole Eiserman, and Kamil Bednarik — have missed at least one game due to various injuries this season.
Against Vermont on Saturday, Fondrk, McLaughlin, Merrill, and Murtagh, who was a late scratch, didn’t play, forcing the Terriers to run a 10-forward rotation. The situation was so dire that Cole Hutson played a shift on the wing.
While Pandolfo didn’t believe the short bench factored into Saturday’s loss, he did allude to its impact after Friday’s win. Either way, it’s not an excuse for BU’s offensive struggles.
Vermont allows 3.6 goals per game, and the Terriers scored four goals across the weekend.
“We have enough chances, like around the net, to find ways to put the puck in the net, and we didn’t,” Pandolfo said postgame on Saturday.
According to InStat, courtesy of BU Hockey Stats on X, BU created zero high-danger chances on Friday and just one on Saturday. One high-danger opportunity against Vermont in 120 minutes is shocking.
The phrase “19 draft picks” has been overused when talking about the Terriers this season, but it’s still worth mentioning given how much they struggled to generate offense this weekend. Simply put, it’s not going to cut it.
Boisvert is an interesting case here. The North Dakota transfer arrived with high expectations after a strong freshman year in Grand Forks. But the goal scorer has managed just one goal in 11 games — the lone tally coming on opening night. The lingering injury that cost him six games has undoubtedly limited his production, but even so, BU needs more from him.
In the case of Ryder Ritchie, it was difficult to project how he would look making the jump to college hockey from the Canadian Hockey League. An early-season grace period was allotted to allow him to adjust to playing against older and stronger players. Seventeen games into his collegiate career, he is still struggling with the physicality of play.
You could go on and on about the Terriers’ forwards and make a case for wanting more from nearly every one of them. The solutions to BU’s offensive problems aren’t obvious — and time is running out.
Lack of defensive improvement and questions of buy-in
If there’s one area of Pandolfo’s tenure that can be questioned, it’s the team defense — specifically over the last two seasons, though it did improve as last year went on.
This season, the team defense has unquestionably been poor, and there’s little sign of improvement. The youth of the defensive corps explains some of the issues, but 17 games in, it’s hard to keep blaming inexperience.
Pandolfo and associate head coach Joe Pereira directly addressed the size of the defensive corps, which BU lacked last season, by bringing in Carter Amico, Charlie Trethewey, and Malte Vass. It’s been an ugly first two months of play for the three freshmen. They’ve all struggled adjusting to the speed of college hockey and have all been prone to mistakes in limited ice time. Trethewey has separated himself from Amico and Vass, finally showing some maturity in his game.
Postgame on Friday, Trethewey admitted the transition from juniors was difficult but said he’s finally starting to find a groove. Pandolfo sees Trethewey getting more comfortable, too.
“You can see his confidence growing, and part of it is he’s getting a little bit more ice time, and he’s taken advantage,” Pandolfo said Friday.
The Terriers’ top pair of Cole Hutson and Gavin McCarthy has been a bright spot. McCarthy in particular has been stout defensively, which is reflected in his team-high plus-nine rating. Still, Hutson and McCarthy are prone to one too many costly blunders.
On the defensive side of the puck, BU’s forwards have left much to be desired. Outside of Roukounakis, Merrill, Brandon Svoboda and Jonathan Morello, the forward group seems like it doesn’t want to get dirty. They play like they are entitled.
The Terriers, more often than not, get too comfortable after a strong stretch of play. Look no further than Friday’s win: Pandolfo loved his team’s first 20 minutes but was appalled by the next 20, even questioning whether his players thought beating Vermont would be easy.
“We started cheating the game. We stopped playing like a team. That’s what I saw,” he said.
It’s also defensive breakdowns late in close games. The Catamounts found the winning goal with just 21.2 seconds remaining on Saturday. It started with a turnover in the neutral zone, and it ended with BU’s worst loss of the season. Saturday’s finish was eerily similar to its loss at Northeastern on Nov. 21.
“It’s kind of been the way things have gone this year for us, where you make mistakes that you just can’t make at certain points of the hockey game,” Pandolfo said.
This is uncharted territory for the Terriers under Pandolfo. As mentioned earlier, this is a new experience for him and his staff. He’s yet to face adversity of this magnitude, but doubting Pandolfo still feels irresponsible at this juncture, even if the rest of the 2025-26 season unfolds in the direction it seems to be heading.
That’s not to say this season hasn’t been a massive disappointment, because it emphatically has as of Dec. 8.