BOSTON – Midway through the first period at Matthews Arena on Saturday afternoon, Anezka Cabelova entered the offensive zone and put a puck on net. Dozens of meters away, Tara Watchorn hung her head.
Watchorn hates it when her Boston University women’s hockey team shoots just for the sake of shooting. The Terriers’ identity – the desired identity anyway – maintains ownership in the zone. Watchorn wants to build momentum and build a territorial advantage. Uncompetitive shots that inevitably lead to a whistle and a face-off don’t help.
So during the media timeout after Cabelova’s shot against Northeastern, Watchorn took the lead. Her message was long and lively. One of her instructions?
“Take them off.”
That’s what BU did so well last season, coming out of nowhere to win Hockey East in Watchorn’s sophomore season. That’s what these Terriers must do to defend their title, something Watchorn preaches time and time again. And that’s what Watchorn’s third-ranked team, which was defeated by the No. 12 Huskies in a 7-3 loss on Saturday, hasn’t done, and that’s why the Terriers are far, far away from where they want and expect to be.
BU is 1-7. It’s 1-2 in Hockey East play. It is already eight points behind the conference lead (albeit with two games to go). In eight games it scored only fifteen goals. This is a very different, much younger team than last season’s, and Watchorn has rightly declared it unfair to expect these Terriers to simply pick up where those Terriers left off. Patience is required with this group. BU has also deliberately made things difficult for itself with a brutal non-conference schedule – all but one of its first five opponents are currently ranked in the USCHO poll – but against the type of competition Watchorn wants to be in, BU still has to play its game the full 60 minutes.
The Terriers can’t keep waiting. It’s getting late early.
Watchorn simply doesn’t believe you are what your record says you are, but she probably agrees that you are what your performances say you are. And that’s the problem for BU. His record is bad. Performance hasn’t been much better.
“We have a week to find out,” Watchorn said when asked about her findings from BU’s performance on Saturday.
She cut a frustrated figure in her postgame availability. Her answers were short and blunt. She declined to actually offer these takeaways, saying she “had no immediate thoughts at this time.” When asked if she would change anything about BU’s power play, which is now 1-of-29 this season, she said, “Everything is open to change.” As for her message to the team immediately after the loss, Watchorn said the team would debrief when they returned to campus.
Not exactly the staunchly optimistic view that Watchorn is known for providing after losses. Notably, no player accompanied her during her availability, the first time this has happened all year with reporters on site.
Northeastern is also young and very different from the group that lost to BU in the Hockey East title game in March, but it is now 6-2 and undefeated in the league. Sure, the Huskies got two of their goals Saturday thanks to two brilliant drives from sophomore Eloise Caron, plays that Watchorn’s team couldn’t do much of, and the other four on the power play. But the Huskies also clearly defeated the Terriers in both games of this series.
BU couldn’t win puck battles or lose pucks at all on Saturday, something that was also an issue in Friday’s 3-1 loss. The Terriers consistently failed to maintain possession through initial interactions with Husky defenders after entering the zone. Watchorn talks ad nauseam about BU players ending their shifts when they have possession of the ball in the zone in order to build momentum and maintain that possession. But the Terriers can’t do that if they don’t have possession to begin with, and if they keep losing as many battles as they are now, they won’t get any.
“No. Not at all,” Watchorn said when asked if BU wins enough battles and loses pucks.
When asked if that was a technique problem or an effort problem, Watchorn said it was both.
It’s not the only problem. The Terriers looked much slower than the Huskies all weekend, which was expected, but they also looked much less physical, a big problem considering that physicality is how BU made up for last season’s relative lack of speed. You can’t really exhaust opponents if you’re not in the more physical group.
After falling behind 4-0 midway through the second period on Saturday, BU played a raw back half of the frame and scored two goals, taking all the momentum into the break. Watchorn said BU’s improved physicality was a big reason, but going just 10 minutes is clearly not enough for the Terriers.
“It starts in practice,” Watchorn said when asked how BU can be more physical. “It’s how we compete there and play with contact.”
These are basic things that the Terriers simply need to do better, for they can start addressing a host of other issues — including their discipline (BU took six penalties Saturday, including captain Maeve Carey’s precious five-minute major in the third) and their special teams play. BU gave up three of its penalty kills, bringing the Terriers’ kill rate to 79 percent this season, a significant decline from last season, when BU’s kill rate ranked second in the entire country. And of course, Watchorn’s 1-of-29 power play is a completely different animal.
“We’re going to have to dive in and watch the film and debrief as a group,” Watchorn said.
It’s still early. The sky never falls again after just three conference games. The floor was always going to be lower for this team, given the amount of experience and talent it lost and the youth of its replacements. But given how bad BU has looked so far against its top competition, the concern is how low that bottom might be.
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