Don’t look now, but after the Friendship Series win, BU women’s hockey is coming

“We just thought this was the sickest thing ever,” said assistant captain Neely Nicholson.

So, as if a group of students were having the time of their lives on vacation across the pond, BU sang the song all week. During off-ice warm-ups. Over a meal somewhere along this 3000 mile road trip. As they emerged from the locker room Friday night to greet friends and family after a thrilling comeback shootout win in their Friendship Series opener.

“We woke up in the morning and said something like: Skol. Skol. Skol,Nicholson said.

So little thought was given to the celebration after Nicholson, late in the third period of a thrilling tournament final on Saturday night, waltzed into the high slot and buried Harvard with the game-winning wrister. The junior, along with the four on the ice behind her, clapped their arms above their heads as they skated back to the bench, with their teammates eventually joining in as they waited for them to arrive.

In the bowels of the SSE Arena after BU’s 3-2 win, Nicholson was asked if her coach had sung the song yet. She looked at Tara Watchorn, who was drenched in water after an apparent post-match party. BU’s third-year principal had no choice.

Clap.

Ten games ago, the defending Hockey East champions were 2-8, the atmosphere so bad that the Ted Lasso-like Watchorn couldn’t even bear to face the media. Now, with their win in the Friendship Series – after easily entering the worst record of four teams – BU is still just 5-11-3, but has enough built-up momentum and optimism to look and sound like it’s 11-5-3.

Maybe that’s a stretch. But the Terriers are now a far cry from the group that Watchorn admitted in a statement to the media “absolutely didn’t show up to play for each other,” after a miserable loss in Maine in early November.

“This journey has been really great for us,” Nicholson said. “We arrived here a week ago, so we had a few days in the beginning to explore a new country and not talk about hockey. It was great to get to know each other on a deeper level away from the rink, and that really translated onto the ice.”

What do we think of these Terriers right now? When you consider the whole body of work, it’s a group of six games under .500 with just 14 to play, one that has yet to record an official win against a ranked opponent or any of the supposed top teams in Hockey East (Northeastern, UConn and BC) and has been outscored 54-39 so far this year. But if you’re just interested in what BU has been doing lately, well: over the past nine games, BU is 3-3-3, with all of those ties leading to shootout wins and two of them coming against No. 8 Quinnipiac and No. 5 UConn. Two of those losses were to BC, a series in which the Terriers rightly felt they played quite well; the other was a 3-2 loss to the Huskies, decided by a last-second goal. Two of those wins were against teams in NPI’s top 20. And now they have a trophy.

You decide how you evaluate BU. But know that Watchorn and the Terriers aren’t worried about how they might start the year and only about what they’ve become since (and as for postseason implications, they have no reason to think otherwise).

As for the 2-8 start, Watchorn quickly admitted that it would have been unfair to expect her third team to immediately reach the level her second team had remained at, considering BU had lost a wealth of on-ice production and its entire leadership group. The Terriers, at least when it comes to wins and losses, haven’t done themselves any favors by planning a brutal non-conference slate to start the year. That context doesn’t excuse 2-8, but at least offers more explanations for the Terriers’ poor early-season results on the ice and their cultural hiccups, the latter of which have become apparent based on recent conversations with Watchorn and senior captain Maeve Carey.

“Getting used to having new people, just a whole new environment in the locker room,” Carey said. “But we persevered and we definitely love each other now. So yeah, it’s just a good time.”

“We have been able to work with them again on hockey and coaching and concepts and don’t have to worry about the little ones [culture] Watchorn added. “Every season will have a curve like that, and it’s a philosophy and belief of our employees that we don’t want to take shortcuts to success when the norms, the identity and the habits of how we show up every day are the most important. And sometimes it’s hard – you want to progress, you want to move on – but you can’t do that until you’ve really solidified it.

The office environment that Watchorn is trying to create is complex. Broadly speaking: it emphasizes definitions of success that go beyond profit and loss; it requires “emotionless” debriefings in the face of in-game setbacks; and it requires the players to clearly understand how their individual contributions fit into a bigger picture. All of this should lead to an on-ice product that maintains possession, builds momentum and sucks the life out of opponents. Last year’s team mastered it. But the system is certainly not easy to install.

It wasn’t until BU’s first win of the year, a win over New Hampshire in the Terriers’ sixth game, that Watchorn began to feel like BU’s habits and mentality were in the right place. Then the stress of a premier Hockey East series against Northeastern reached the Terriers, and the Huskies raced Watchorn’s team in what they admitted this week was a step back. Then came the miserable loss in the series opener in Maine and the night in the hotel during HE’s longest road trip that followed.

“Over the course of the season there are moments that stand out,” Watchorn said of that night in Maine. “You go on the road after a tough schedule with no conferences, and we have a hard time resetting. But we stuck together. We had great captains’ meetings and we were able to use that time to choose to stick together instead of getting frustrated. It wasn’t one big thing, it was just a commitment to having conversations and utilizing the time.”

Watchorn loves road trips for this very reason. You can’t go anywhere. What better remedy for a team that wasn’t playing for each other than a weekend of being forced to spend time together?

“When you’re home, you can go back to your room and be alone, and that gives you more time to think about things,” Carey said. “Whereas when you’re with your teammates, even when you’re down, they’re there to pick you up.”

The Terriers woke up the next day to a 2-1 victory over Maine. In the nine games since then, they have looked like a completely different team.

There were shades of the team BU is trying to be all weekend in Belfast. Friday against Quinnipiac, the Terriers were shelled for the first half hour and fell behind by two goals, then somehow found a way to shake it off, figure out what worked and get the Bobcats’ chain. Watchorn said afterward that this was the best BU has responded to adversity in the game all year. A night later, the Terriers dominated Harvard for several stretches, just as Watchorn wants. They blew two separate leads, but stuck to their game and found a way to win it.

“When you really learn how to build momentum, it’s something that newcomers and young players have never heard of, and that’s a lot,” Watchorn said. “But it gives you the ability to be tactical in games and to solve problems and be emotionless. We’ve worked very hard to get there – and it’s hard to do – but I think we’re there where they think like professionals, and now suddenly they’re the ones managing and solving problems.”

Make no mistake: BU certainly wasn’t perfect during the Friendship Series. In reality, it was quite lucky to survive until the shootout against Quinnipiac, and it was outpaced by Harvard. But the progress the Terriers have made from the beginning of the year, when they went 0-5 against strong non-conference opponents, to the start of the spring semester has been evident. For a team slowly but surely coming back from the dead, momentum and forward progress are all that matter.

“It’s great momentum to start the year,” Nicholson said. “We all knew what we were capable of.”

After Nicholson scored the winner, Watchorn watched from the bench with her arms folded. She nodded her head and smiled, the look of a woman who knows it’s all starting to come together.

Don’t look now, but BU women’s hockey is coming.