Cole Hutson didn’t even have it in him to celebrate.
Moments earlier, he was the one smashing his stick against the Agganis Arena endboards after yet another missed chance. So, no, what the star sophomore felt after potting the go-ahead goal early in the second period wasn’t exactly joy.
“I was gripping my stick pretty tight,” Hutson said. “It’s been a while since I scored.”
Since Jan. 17, to be exact, and that goal was his first since Nov. 22. The Capitals’ second-round pick, who still easily leads BU in points (25), was starting to wonder what exactly he was doing wrong. Because he was finding chances. Case in point: the very end of the first period on Saturday night, when he elected to shoot instead of passing across to a teammate. He aimed high and his shot was blocked.
Hutson decided then that he was constantly shooting at the same spot. So when an open wrister presented itself early in the second? “Shot it low for once,” he said.
Voilà.
“Just felt good to get that one,” said a stone-faced Hutson, still in no mood to celebrate.
But, hey. Relief is better than even more frustration. That’s true for Hutson and most certainly true for his reeling team, which won’t exactly be throwing a party after its 5-3 victory over UNH — it’s still a game under .500, after all — but will take anything positive it can get.
The Terriers will take five goals, too. Especially the high-end talents like Hutson, who probably thought they would’ve scored a lot more of them by now. The man sitting next to him in the postgame press conference, Cole Eiserman, can vouch even harder for that — perhaps the most snake-bitten player on BU’s underperforming roster, the first-rounder, who led all NCAA freshmen in goals last season, entered Saturday with only 12. He was squandering Grade A chances nightly. When a golden 2-on-1 opportunity presented itself 90 seconds into the third, the sophomore who always shoots wound back to shoot again.
Then he passed. As soon as he hit the back of his windup, he slid the puck through his legs to a wide-open Jack Harvey, who blasted a one-timer into an open net. UNH netminder Kyle Chauvette, no doubt privy to the scouting reports that deem Eiserman a hyper-dangerous goal scorer but a harmless playmaker, didn’t even realize Harvey was the one shooting.
“The goalie stood his ground on shots. So if I faked it and got the puck over, it would work,” Eiserman said. “Worked on it in practice a few times, and I decided to try it.”
Eiserman did score — on his very next shift — but UNH coach Mike Souza successfully challenged for offsides. That’s just the Islanders’ prospect’s luck right now, but Eiserman still got to see one go in — the game-clinching empty-netter in the final minute. He was more than happy to celebrate.
“I don’t think I’ve scored an empty-net goal in eight years,” he said. “So that felt pretty nice.”
Eight years? Per Eiserman’s EliteProspects page, he’s scored 327 goals across all competitions over the last six seasons (the page doesn’t go back eight years). None were empty-netters? Does he even remember who he was playing for eight years ago?
“Probably the Middlesex Islanders,” he reckoned.
That’s a local junior hockey club. His head coach couldn’t help but laugh.
BU’s futility in front of goal hasn’t been much of a laughing matter for Jay Pandolfo, who lamented that his team “couldn’t buy a goal” after a miserable 4-1 defeat at UNH on Friday night. And make no mistake: BU didn’t go without squandering more Grade A looks on Saturday, hence Hutson’s frustration after a 15-shot first period that still left the Terriers tied at 1-1. But the Terriers didn’t let their early exasperation force them away from their game. BU peppered 11 more shots on Chauvette’s goal in the second and scored twice (Jack Murtagh, a freshman second-round pick, tallied after Hutson). The Terriers finished with 34 shots on goal to the Wildcats’ 27.
“We come out of the second with the lead, which was huge for us,” Pandolfo said. “It’s been a while since we’ve gone into the third with a 3-1 lead.”
Per BU Hockey Stats, the Terriers have spent less than 200 in-game minutes with a two-goal lead this season.
Finally — finally — Pandolfo’s team kept pushing for (most of) the 60 minutes. You could probably count the number of times BU’s done that this season on one hand. No surprise, though, that when the Terriers found a way to play the same way shift after shift and period after period, they won the game.
And at this point, that’s all anyone’s asking of them. Look no further than Agganis’ Raising Canes challenge, which awards fans in attendance with free chicken if BU hits a specific goal, usually an arbitrary statistical target. On Friday? Fans got chicken simply if BU won.
Whether intentional or not, that’s a pretty good illustration of where these Terriers are at. After BU’s 6-2 loss to BC in the Beanpot final on Monday and its “deflating” loss at UNH on Friday, Agganis was barely half full. Attendance in BU’s student section, The Dog Pound, was even worse. The Terriers were 31st in the NPI entering the game and all but eliminated from at-large contention. On paper, the only thing left for BU to play for is seeding in the Hockey East tournament. BU knows how dire that is. Pandolfo has acknowledged it about a gazillion times.
Given that backdrop, and given how lifeless they were in Durham, N.H., on Friday night, it was worth wondering if the Terriers would just roll over.
They didn’t. And while that doesn’t mean they’ll continue to play well — if we’ve learned anything about these Terriers, it’s that — at least Pandolfo didn’t have to trudge into the Agganis press room and dissect another loss.
“We got to play every game. This time together, it’s so special,” Eiserman said. “It could go as far as it did last year (the national championship), or it could be done whenever. But we’ve got to make sure that every game, we’re super grateful for it.”
Pandolfo didn’t have to defend his mysterious decision to bench sophomore goalie Mikhail Yegorov, either. Because junior Max Lacroix, making his first start of the season, was solid between the pipes — after conceding a gorgeous goal he couldn’t do much about, Lacroix stood tall against several legitimate UNH chances. He made 24 saves.
Pandolfo said he made the move to give Yegorov a rest. The Terriers have their Hockey East bye week before a home-and-home series with Boston College starting at Agganis on Feb. 27.
“That’s too far ahead,” Pandolfo said when asked if Yegorov will start that game. “But yeah, Mike’s gonna be back in the net for sure.”