TAMPA, Fla. — Boston University senior Jay O’Brien remembers all too well what his feelings were on the evening of March 12, 2022.
His Terriers team had just lost a Hockey East quarterfinal game to an upstart Connecticut team, 3-1, to conclude a highly disappointing 2021-22 campaign. A Boston University team that was picked to finish second ended the regular season in a three-way tie for fourth and was the fifth seed in the league tournament.
It was at that point that conversations began among the team’s massive junior class, many of whom had planned to forgo their senior season for pro hockey: Maybe we have some unfinished business.
“We had a lot of juniors on that team, right now are seniors,” O’Brien said of last year’s club. “And a couple of us, I know me and [defenseman] Dom [Fensore] kind of sat down and kind of looked at each other and we were like, ‘We’re not ready to leave this program. We’re not ready to leave this university.'”
That started a snowball effect, and by the time the 2022-23 season rolled around, all but one member of that junior class had committed to return.
“It’s a lot of unfinished business,” said Fensore. “We want to be remembered here. We want to leave a legacy, be a part of the history. Like Coach [Jay Pandolfo, he] came here to win a national championship. His teammates probably still talk to each other today, just how special it is, the bond they have together.”
That dream of winning that national title is just two wins away for this senior class, which accounts for more than 44 percent of the Terriers’ offense this season. Everything they’ve accomplished this season — a Hockey East regular season and postseason championship, and a win at the NCAA Manchester Regional two weekends ago — they’ve done it under a first-year collegiate head coach in Pandolfo.
He admits that, while this feels like a dream season, it hasn’t been without bumps in the road, notably a four-game losing streak in mid-February that included being swept in the Beanpot tournament by Northeastern and Boston College.
It was through that slump that Pandolfo said he had to lean the most on his senior leaders.
“The Beanpot stretch, I think we went into that thinking we were going to defend it — and I don’t know if we thought it was going to be easy,” said Pandolfo. “But when we lost, we got down as a group, I felt.
“As a coach, I might have started letting some things slip because we were doing so well and then some stuff started bubbling up. These guys [the senior leaders] came to me. We talked — I have an open-door policy for these guys; they can come in and talk about anything that’s on their mind. They came in, addressed some things with me. We sat down and talked about it. We met as a group.”
Pandolfo admitted that it was the experience of the group — the ability to read the team — that proved to be an invaluable asset during a difficult stretch. Since that, BU has won nine straight games entering Thursday’s national semifinal against Minnesota.
“These guys are mature enough to figure that out,” Pandolfo said. “I give them a lot of credit and I have all year long. It’s made my job really easy as a first-year head coach to have this type of support from our leadership group. You’re not always going to have that.”
The task ahead of BU is tall — a Minnesota team that has been the top overall team for most of the season. But should the Terriers prevail and have an opportunity to win the team’s first national title since 2009, these seniors will certainly reap the rewards they have sown.
“It’s kind of what I wanted to come back and do,” said Fensore. “We’ve done a great job so far. We have two more wins to do it.”
