This Week In '06: Garden Bound

After tying a pair of games with the Catamounts in Burlington, the following weekend saw the Terriers sweep a home in home series with Northeastern and capture the Hockey East regular season title for the first time once 2000.

That set the stage for a 1 vs 8 matchup with the top seeded Terriers hosting UMass at the Greek on March 10th and 11th.

BU won the series with a two of 4-1 wins to advance to the Garden.

Game 1 
David van der Gulik notched his first of two hat-tricks in the league playoffs. He scored BU's first two goals, before UMass answered on a five on three early in the third. John Laliberte regained the two goal lead for BU midway through the final frame and Vandy caped off the hat-trick with an empty net goal.

John Curry and UMass goalie Gabe Winer both turned aside an identical 25 shots.

“The first thing that jumps out at me tonight about my team is that John Curry played very well,” Terrier coach Jack Parker said. “He had some tough saves in the first period and third period. We didn’t give up a lot of shots, but we gave up some good ones. I thought he made a couple of subtly great saves that kept them from getting any kind of momentum. You saw what happened when they scored the goal: they got a lot of momentum for a while there.

“In general I thought it was a good effort by our team against a team that gives us trouble because they can skate. We’ve had real good games with them this season, and this was a similar kind of game that we’ve had the last three, and I’m sure it will be the same tomorrow night. We’re going to have be more thorough tomorrow night if we’re going to get by this team. I thought that they were more thorough than we were tonight.” From USCHO

Game 2

The BU offense picked up right where it left off a night before. Boomer Ewing netted a goal from Peter MacArthur and Kenny Roche just 1:16 into the game. 

That was the only goal until the 5:50 mark in the third. Laliberte and Roche scored less than four minutes apart to give the Terriers a 3-0 lead. UMass gave some pushback with an extra attacker goal in the final minutes, but MacArthur put the final dagger in the 2006 UMass hockey season with empty net goal. 

Curry again played well, stopping 32 saves including 13 in the third. John Quick was back in he UMass cage, and he also made 32 saves. 

“I thought that this was a better game all-around for both teams,” Parker said. “I told my team today at the pregame skate after watching the film from last night that I thought that we played a ‘C’ game, and they played a ‘C’ game. And I told them I thought that they would play much harder tonight, and they did, and that we needed to play much harder tonight, and we did.

“We made a lot of good plays, but their goaltender played very well. We also gave up jumps, and they forechecked us hard — came at us pretty well. We haven’t given up 33 shots in a while, so it was nice that we outshot them, but we gave up a few too many shots in the third. I was very, very happy to get by them.” From USCHO

After the series win, BU moved on to the league semis finals and a date with UNH, the only team to beat them in over a month.