Monday, September 16, 2013

The Last Year


It started one day in the summer of 2009, the summer after the team won the National Championship. I was bored one afternoon in August, and I was looking to make a comment on the Terrier Hockey Fan Blog about the schedule for the upcoming year. Little did I know (at the time) you needed a Blogger account to make a comment. So I made an account and shortly after, I hit this button that said "Start your own blog" completely by accident. I kept going with it and after what must have been a good two hours, I had a blog that completely copied the THFB. 

In the coming weeks I actually started writing posts. The main thing that fueled my blog at the start was the pictures. I starting bring my camera to games in '09 and had all these picture of BU hockey games, but nothing to really do with them. Then I said to myself that I would do some research on games that were coming up and news surrounding the team, and maybe throw in a few pictures while I was at it. That turned into every Friday morning of eighth grade waking up (way too excitedly) at 5:30am and writing game previews during the season. 

Ill be the first one to admit that the first year/year and a half of the whole thing, I had no clue what I was doing. 

That all slowly changed in 2011 when I got to high school and actually understood the English language a little more. Also, that was the year I decided copying the THFB's design was incredibly unoriginal and so, I adopted the grey background with the three columns still used today.

In 2012, I started the Twitter account that is tied in with the website. Like the blog itself, I had no clue what I was doing when I first got on Twitter. With time, I figured out it was the best thing I ever did to "advertise" the blog. I also met a ton of people in and around the College Hockey circle.

Last year, for whatever reason, was a struggle for me to write articles (I think I can call them articles now). I also missed a lot more games last year due to hockey games of my own. It is always easy to write when the team is doing well, but nothing was harder than trying to cover the team in January and early February , last winter.

The 4th place finish in the Beanpot final was the absolute low point and I even considered stoping the blog at that point. I was so disinterested in things that the next week's games up in Maine felt like a chore to watch. Thankfully the team pulled out three points in Orono so it was not so unbearable to watch.

The next weekend, Vermont came to Agganis and I couldn't tell you a thing that happened that weekend. Friday night I had my playoff game for Medfield High. We were the one seed in South Regional with an 18-1-1 record. We lost in the first round of the playoffs to Pembroke 4-3 in a shootout after coming back from 0-3 down with less than 6 minutes to play. The loss was crippling to me and I took it pretty hard. I still went to the BU-UVM game that Saturday night, but I didn't even really watch the game. 

At that point, I was really just looking forward to the summer and for the first time maybe ever in my life, I just wanted hockey to be over.


Then the Hockey East Tournament came around and so did the news that Coach Parker would be retiring at the end of the season. When I heard that news, I said to myself, "I just have to finish this year and I can wrap up the blog in the off-season."

It was a good thought, but the team played so well down the stretch to make a last ditch effort to make the tournament that it actually was fun to watch hockey again. 

The main inspiration to keep writing was the BC game in the Hockey East Semis. The way the team came back that night really made me want to follow the team for one more year.

Yes, this upcoming season will be the final season of The BU Hockey Blog. It will also be my senior year of high school. My plans are (right now) to PG at a prep school and try and play DIII College Hockey somewhere. 

Maybe one day I can actually get paid for writing about hockey, but for now I do still enjoy covering it this way and I can't wait for opening night. Is it October yet?

Top 4 Games I've Covered

  1. BU vs BC, 2013 Hockey East Semi Final (BU 6, BC 3)
  2. BU vs Northeastern, 2010 Beanpot Semi Final (BU 2, NU 1) 
  3. BU vs Notre Dame, 2011 Icebreaker Championship Game (BU 5, ND 4)
  4. BU vs Northeastern, Last game of the 2010 regular season (BU 4, NU3)
  5. BU vs UNH, 2012 Hockey East Quarterfinals Game 3 (BU 5, UNH 4 {2ot}) 

1 comment: