For one hundred ninety four minutes and 24 seconds, spanning the last three games, UNH goaltender Mike Ayers has blanked Boston University. <\/p>\n
The reason that the Terriers have been held scoreless is no real mystery. Ayers, the Hockey East co-Player of the Year and NCAA Northeast Regional MVP, has been phenomenal all season long. But despite Ayers’s abilities, a number of teams have put pucks behind him. What has made BU so ineffective?<\/p>\n
In a word (or maybe two): power plays. Against Ayers over the last three games BU has gone a combined 0-for-13 playing a man up. Part of that blanking is attributable to the UNH penalty kill, which exerted constant pressure on the Terriers.<\/p>\n
“We play aggressive shorthanded, hopefully not giving them time and space,” UNH coach Dick Umile said.<\/p>\n
A close look at the stat sheet confirmed Umile’s point: over the course of five power plays Saturday, the Terriers managed only five shots. Needless to say, UNH didn’t give up a lot of second chances opportunities when down a man.<\/p>\n
“Their defense did a great job boxing out, and kept us from getting rebounds,” BU captain Freddy Meyer agreed.<\/p>\n
But giving UNH’s defense or Ayers all of the credit is missing the over-arching point. BU’s major weakness this season, and especially in Saturday’s game, was its inability to convert on the power play.<\/p>\n
It’s not a new occurrence. Over the course of the season the Terriers converted a mere 18 percent of their chances with the man-advantage. For a Top Ten team to struggle that mightily on the power play is surprising, but against UNH, with its aggressive defense and spectacular goaltending, the normally-just-impotent BU power play turned moribund.<\/p>\n
“The biggest difference in the game was that they got a power-play goal and we didn’t,” Boston University coach Jack Parker said.<\/p>\n
Although UNH finished the night 1-for-3, the Wildcats were perfect with their first opportunity of the night. <\/p>\n
With the game’s first power play at 12:18 of the first, UNH set up in the BU zone. Winger Jim Abbott passed from along the low boards to Preston Callander along the left circle. Callander fired a shot on BU goaltender Sean Fields, but temporary linemate Josh Prudden deflected the puck mid-flight, and Fields was unable to track the new course, giving the Hockey East champions a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Though UNH had the game’s first power play, BU would have a steady stream of chances with a Wildcat in the box over the last five minutes of the first and the first five of the second. Given four power plays in a span of just over 10 minutes, the Terriers came up empty on all four. <\/p>\n
“We didn’t score on any power-play chances, so it wasn’t any one sequence [that was the turning point],” Parker said.<\/p>\n
That might be true. <\/p>\n
For most college hockey teams the failure to score a single goal with that many consecutive opportunities would be considered a turning point in the game. For the Terriers, it was simply the story of their season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BU’s struggles on the power play were critical in Saturday’s season-ending loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n