STORRS, Conn. — With 17 and a half minutes left to either do or die, a Murtagh brother retrieved a loose puck. It was Mike, the Connecticut sophomore. Viking Gustafsson Nyberg, the Huskies’ gargantuan senior defenseman, had sent a wrister in from the point. Mikhail Yegorov saved it easily. Murtagh, buzzing below the goal line in a game tied at 2-2, was all over the rebound.
The Huskies, Jay Pandolfo eventually told assembled media in the lobby of Toscano Family Ice Forum, are really good at this. They just stay around the puck. When Mike Cavanaugh’s team sets up in the offensive zone — and Pandolfo’s didn’t make that difficult — his Huskies are relentless. They funnel pucks to the net, recover the rebound and do it all again. Seldom did they end a period of zone time on Saturday with only a single shot on Yegorov’s goal.
Put another way? Defending UConn is hard work. The BU outfit that made the trip to Storrs, Conn. with its season on the line is hardly known for that. By this season’s standards, the Terriers’ effort in the Hockey East Quarterfinal was actually pretty good. Pandolfo had no qualms about it. And yet, part of the reason BU is headed back to Agganis Arena to digest the program’s most disappointing season in years and not to TD Garden to keep playing hockey is because, during a game in which the Terriers worked pretty hard, the Huskies worked harder. “We couldn’t find loose pucks around the slot,” Pandolfo said afterwards.
With Murtagh underneath him, Aiden Celebrini offered a weak check, aimlessly shoving his arms into the 5-foot-11 forward’s back. Murtagh wheeled away without a hassle and skated for the sideboards. Jonathan Morello, in best position to cover the left circle, was sucked down to the goal line to defend Murtagh. He left Ethan Whitcomb behind.
Whitcomb wasn’t the first Husky, nor the last, to find himself alone in the zone on Saturday. A period prior, UConn top-liner Jake Richard stood all alone at the dots in the right circle, as if BU was asking the Huskies to set up Richard for a one-timer. Richard promptly blasted a puck past a hapless Yegorov to give the hosts a 2-1 lead. The Terriers, green as ever, made a number of mistakes like that early on in 2025-26, as they stumbled to one of the worst goal prevention records in the country through the first two months. BU tightened up as the campaign progressed but never truly buckled the hatches. Gavin McCarthy, Jack Harvey, Aiden Celebrini and Kamil Bednarik — three of BU’s most experienced players — were on the ice for Richard’s power-play goal. One of them wasn’t where they were supposed to be. “We just lost coverage,” Pandolfo deadpanned.
Sensing the uncovered Whitcomb, Murtagh slid a pass around Morello’s outstretched stick. Whitcomb received it with his skate and rifled a shot at net. Standing in front of Yegorov, McCarthy easily blocked the shot. But the puck squirted right back to where it came from, and Whitcomb, with more time and a running start, placed his rebound perfectly. A glum Pandolfo correctly acknowledged the misfortune of that bounce, but it was the kind of luck good hockey teams create. Indeed, when withstanding the Huskies’ repeated offensive-zone pressure, the dam eventually breaks. “Give them a lot of credit,” conceded Pandolfo. UConn 3, BU 2.
With his assist, Murtagh, an undrafted 21-year-old, recorded his 19th point of the season. His younger brother, Jack, a true freshman at BU, was drafted 40th overall by the Philadelphia Flyers last June. Regarded as one of the higher-end talents on a team full of high-end talents, he finished his first NCAA campaign with only 11. He was not the only big-name Terrier to underproduce.
After pinballing around the tiny Toscano ice sheet for 30 seconds following the restart, the puck found McCarthy’s stick in the corner of BU’s defensive zone. Right before he got crunched by an approaching Husky, the Terriers’ captain deposited the puck towards the center of the ice and into the stride of Bednarik.
Pandolfo criticized his team’s puck management all season long. After a 4-2 victory over LIU in the opener, he called it “atrocious.” BU battled all kinds of recurring deficiencies in 2025-26, and poor puck management — specifically through the neutral zone — was undoubtedly among the most pressing. This was caused in large part by individual Terriers constantly trying to do too much, even as Pandolfo begged them to keep it simple. At other times, this was because BU’s vaunted talents were simply clumsy with the puck. Regardless, the Terriers never stopped committing turnovers, and opponents never stopped making them pay. UConn was no exception. The Huskies opened the scoring on Saturday when Cole Eiserman and Bednarik both inexplicably fumbled with the puck on an unpressured offensive-zone entry, the ensuing turnover sparking a 2-on-1 rush the other way. Husky senior Jake Percival calmly took his Grade A chance.
McCarthy’s pass was ever-so-slightly behind Bednarik. The sophomore tried to control it with his skate, but the puck ricocheted way too far out in front of him. UConn’s Tristan Fraser picked up the scraps and headed for the sideboards, where he crossed the blue line and carried the puck down below BU’s goal. UConn was setting up in the offensive zone.
“Turnover in the neutral zone,” Pandolfo dutifully explained, “and they came back at us.”
After a car crash in front of Yegorov, the Huskies recovered the loose puck and fired a shot on net. When BU’s sophomore netminder saved it, they recovered the rebound and plastered another one-timer towards the cage, then retrieved that rebound too. UConn recycled the puck to the point, then watched its freshman defenseman Anthony Allain-Samake place a wrister Yegorov, as hot as he was, couldn’t keep out. UConn 4, BU 2.
“You go down two goals?” Pandolfo said. “It’s too tough to try to come back.”
In an elimination game for both teams, the Terriers went blow for blow with the Huskies for 40 minutes. They entered the second intermission tied at 2-2 and deservedly so. Complete, sustained efforts win this time of year, however, and perhaps the biggest thorn in the Terriers’ side during a season full of them was their year-long bout with inconsistency. BU played well for a period in plenty of games. It locked in for two frames in several more. Rarely, though, did Pandolfo’s team maintain a winning level for a full 60 minutes.
UConn took the ice for the third period on Saturday ready to throw another punch. This time, Pandolfo admitted, BU wasn’t prepared to throw one back.
It was nothing he hadn’t seen before.
