Rink Tour

I know I said I was done here, but as a final wrap up, I leave you with a visual of every rink I've ever seen BU play at, in chronological order.

Section 9, Row T, Seats 1 and 2 at Walter Brown
the place where I saw my first hockey game

The Garden, fitting I ended high school hockey career
on the same bench Jack Parker did 

Tsongas Arena, my first road game (2001)

Matthews Arena (2002)

BU played at DCU in 2002, '03, '05, and '06 in the NCAA
Tournament.

Conte Forum, Boston College (2003) 

Schneider Arena, Providence. First Time I went was in 2003 in
the Hockey East Quarterfinals.  

Agganis Arena opened it's doors in January of 2005, I was
at Opening Night, a 2-1 win over Minnesota. This is the view
from my season tickets in second 114 

Bright Center, Harvard. (2006). Harvard is one of two rinks
on this list that I have actually played a hockey game on.
The other is Boston Garden

Lawler Rink, Merrimack (2007)

Verizon Wireless Arena, Manchester NH (2009 NCAA Regionals) 

Verizon Center, Washington DC (2009 Frozen Four). My first
and only Frozen Four.

Mullins Center, UMass (2010)

Madison Square Garden, New York City.
Been here for three of the four Red Hot Hockey
games with Cornell, the first of which I saw in
November 2009.  

Scott Trade Center, St. Louis, Missouri (Icebreaker 2011) 

Gutterson Field-House, Vermont (2012)

Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, Minnesota (2012 West Regional)

The Wittemore Center, New Hampshire (2013)

Yost Ice Arena, Michigan (2014)

Munn Arena, Michigan State (2014)

Alfond Arena, Maine (2014)

So This Is The End

By now I'm sure anyone who reads this blog knows that BU's season came to an end last Saturday night with a 3-2 loss at Notre Dame in round one of the Hockey East playoffs. For the first time since 1992, BU failed to win at least one game in the HE tournament. That year (as the 4 seed) they lost to (5) Boston College 4-2 in the one game, single elimination quarterfinal format used that year.

As I said at the start of the year, this would be the last year of the blog and the last year I could cover the team. It is sad to see it go, but it may be back in a few years. Hopefully if everything works out I will actually attend BU as a student and not just an avid hockey fan. As a lot of you know I play hockey myself, and next year I am going to prep school in Maine (Bridgton Academy) to further my hockey career. Where that takes me, right now, I don't know. But I do hope I have the chance to come to BU for school (and maybe hockey, eh, coach Quinn? haha) but for now I really just don't know.

So this is the last post. Never did I think I would do this for five seasons when I started back in 8th grade. Back then I didn't even really know how to type and I actually made the site completely by accident. I was attempting to post a comment on a post on the Terrier Hockey Fan Blog when I clicked this big orange button saying "Create your own Blog" and thought to myself,  "What the hell, why not?" From there it took off and I never thought I would actually cover the games, but I stuck with it. The first year I would wake up before school to write about the team.  Five years later as a senior in high school, I have a class in school (independent study) solely devoted to the blog and covering my high school's sport teams.

Looking Toward Next Year
I don't know when the next game I will be able to go to is and it's a strange feeling because for the last whatever amount of years I always have gone to opening night. As for next year's team, it will definitely  be one to watch.

Granted this year's squad didn't win a great deal of games, but all of them (with the exception of the Maine games) were very close, at least scoreboard wise. Next year the team returns a ton of talent and also sees one of the most highly regarded recruit classes to pull on the scarlet and white. Jack Eichel headlines the class with other notable recruits including A.J. Greer and John MacLeod. Here's the complete class: Link.

I never imagined that I would stick with it that long but I'm really glad I did. It never has seemed like "work" to me, it was always something I truly enjoyed and I'm going to miss it. So I leave you with the inspiration for starting this whole thing back in the summer of 2009...


)

Hockey East Round One: Notre Dame

With a four point weekend, the first of its kind this year, BU pulled themselves out of a potential last place finish in the league standings. As it is, this year is the worst finish for BU ever in Hockey East. Thankfully with Notre Dame joining the league this season, the playoff format was changed from the top 8 teams, to all 11 making the tournament.

From the Vault
BU celebrates Sean Escobeo's game winning goal with 1:07
left in the 2010 Icebreaker Championship game vs Notre Dame
in St. Louis. 

Obviously, in past years, BU would not have qualified for the league tournament. That is something that has never happened. 2004 was about as close as you could possibly imagine to not making it. BU needed a win in UNH (who finished 4th) on the last day of the season to finish 8th and just sneak in; otherwise they would have finished last and Merrimack would have taken the 8 seed. In that must win with UNH, the Terriers took a 2-0 lead before the 'Cats scored two of their own to tie things up in the third. The teams traded goals midway through period three and the game went to overtime tied 3-3. Almost halfway through the extra session, BU's David  Van der Gulik got off a shot from the circle, crashed the net and took about four whacks at the rebound before finally forcing the puck past Mike Ayers and into the goal sending BU to Hockey East Playoffs.

In the tournament, BU played number one seed Boston College and to everyone's surprise, won Game One 3-2 despite getting out shot 28-7. BC blanked BU 4-0 the next night, before BU pulled off one of, if not the biggest upsets in the HE tournament with a 4-2 win in Game Three. The Terriers advanced to the Garden to play Maine, where one last third period goal ended the 2004 BU hockey season. Sean Fields made 31 saves in the 1-0 loss, his last game as a Terrier.

So enough with the history lesson and onto this weekend....

Tomorrow BU will play league newcomer, Notre Dame in a one game playoff to advance to the quarterfinals, where (if all the higher seeds win out, except BU) , the Terriers will once again face Boston College. There are a lot of comparisons with 2004, hence why they have been brought up all year.

Two weeks ago, these two teams played in South Bend, seeing Notre Dame win a pair of 2-0 games. BU was plagued with some unfortunate travel struggles as their flight out to Indiana was re-routed and grounded twice before landing in South Bend.

Notre Dame is led offensively by TJ Tynan, who has 8 goals, 23 assists for 31 points in 34 games. Behind him is Mario Lucia (son of Minnesota head coach Don Lucia) who leads the team in goals with 15 and also has 13 assists for 28 points. WJC standout Vince Hinostroza also has 28 points with 7-21-28 line.

In goal, BU will again see Steven Summerhays. The senior from Anchorage, Alaska is the owner of an 18-11-2 record. In his time in goal, Summerhays has posted a .929 save percentage and a 1.87 goals against average, along with a stunning seven shutouts.

Unfortunately the game will not be on TV, but those interested can buy that game though the ND Athletics website.

I will not be able to make it out to Indiana because my high school team is still in the playoffs and I have a game on Sunday.

Catching Up

It's been a few weeks since I posted and that has nothing to do with how the team is playing. Personally it's been a really busy time of year and I have only been able to make it to one game since the Beanpot, so it's been a little difficult to keep up with things on the blog.

Friday night, Jack Parker's number

That being said, I was at the game Friday night. That was a different team that has played in the second semester. It has seemed since the Beanpot that things have slowly been progressing. The team played UNH pretty tough and despite getting shutout two nights in a row by Notre Dame, they hung right with the Irish.

Speaking of the Irish, with the sweep of Northeastern last weekend and Notre Dame's overtime win against Boston College, the Terriers and Irish will meet in the first round of the Hockey East tournament. The new format this year sees the bottom six teams play a one game playoff to get the field of 11 down to 8.

Sixth seeded Maine will host Merrimack, 7th place Vermont have a date with 10th seeded UMass in Burlington and BU will travel back out to South Bend to face Notre Dame. UVM and UMass play Friday night on NESN and the other two games are on Saturday.