Thoughts Confirmed

Yesterday I put up an article about how the team would be ranked #1 in the nation. Today that was confirmed. Receiving 31 of the possible 50 first place votes. BU became the nation's new #1 ranked team in the USCHO poll.  The Terriers jumped over both Miami and Minnesota Duluth. Duluth remained in second with 11 first place votes, but Miami fell to fourth. Yale jumped from 5th to 3rd and Maine rounded out the top five. Newbees to the poll were Western Michigan at 17 and Ferris State at 20.

"I would like to know who's voting," Parker said laughing. "We're a pretty good team, but I don't think we're the No. 1 team in the nation."

This is the first time since March 23rd 2009 that BU has been ranked #1.

BU is the third team to reach the summit of the polls. Miami and Boston College were the others.

The Terriers were also ranked #1 in Inside College Hockey's Power rankings. BU and Duluth were once again the top two teams, but Maine, Yale and Miami made up the top five (in that order).

 BU was also ranked #1 in the USA Today poll with 23 first place votes.

 Notes from the Maine game

Maine was by far the best team BU has played so far this season. The Black Bears outplayed the Terriers for large chunks of the game, though mostly in the first two periods. Maine outshot BU 23-14 over the first two frames but BU held them off the board, mainly due to great penalty killing.

BU killed off all 6 of Maine's man advantages, including a 5 on 3 not even two minutes into the game.

"That was the surprise of the game, actually," said BU's Parker. "We did a great job of killing penalties, especially on the 5-on-3's."

Prior to the game, Maine had the 7th best power play in the country at 25.5%. BU had the third best PK in the land and it showed Saturday. At the start of the season, it looked like the penalty kill was going to need a lot of work. The University of Toronto scored two PP goals on BU like they were a high school team. Granted, it was a exhibition game and it was the first time the team had played together, but it was not promising. The next weekend Wisconsin showed up the PK in basically the same way Toronto had. Since then BU has killed of 36 of 37 power plays including 22 straight. 

Goalie Kieran Millan once again looked very solid in net stopping 34 of 36 shots. 

BU's comeback marks the second time in two weeks that they have scored a game tying goal inside of five minutes to go. 

New Season, New Results

At this point last year, BU was 2-6-0 and had not won a game since the 30th of October when they beat Lowell 5-4 in overtime. They were nowhere near the top of Hockey East, in fact they were dead last and not even close to the top twenty rankings. This season they are a top both the hHockey East standings and the top 20. 

In Other News

BU's Women's team was ranked 5th in the nation and received one first place vote.