By Scott Weighart, Special to GoTerriers.com

BOSTON – Boston University coach David Quinn and I go to the same gym, and I often bumped into him on Sunday afternoons over the course of the season.

Sometimes I saw him after a tough loss or yet another one step forward, one step back weekend. At one point in December, the team had a 7-10-1 record. The Terriers had to contend with some subpar performances, the extended absence of forward Jordan Greenway due to the Winter Olympics, and the season-ending illness to a great playmaker in Patrick Harper.

Whatever the circumstances, Quinn always said the same thing to me, repeatedly, every time I saw him: "I like this team!"

After beating Providence to claim the Hockey East championship Saturday, Quinn strode by me on the way to the press conference. I gave him a thumbs up.

"Told ya!" he said.

He certainly did.

"Well, I can't really put into words how good I feel for the school and it's been a tale of two seasons for us," Quinn said at the postgame press conference. "The last time we played Providence, we were 9-11-1 when we tied them and it looked like there was really not a lot of hope. We started getting better goaltending, our d-corps started playing better, our freshmen started to emerge a little more; it just started snowballing."
 
"Every day he says there's no other team he'd rather be coaching," Terrier captain Brandon Hickey said. "A lot of people obviously thought he was a little crazy in the first half with our record being like 8-11, but he sees something in our team. He's a great hockey mind. Everyone has learned to trust him because he's right a lot of the time, and I've learned to trust him over my four years. If you just trust in his process and trust in his coaching, you're going to get results like we got today."

It was a night that brought to mind The Beatles' Revolution 9, as nine was indeed the magic number. BU beat No. 9 Providence to win its ninth Hockey East Championship, which it also won nine years ago.

But an even more striking revolution was the fact that the BU seniors came full circle from their freshman season, when the same Providence team broke their hearts on the same ice surface, as the Friars scored two goals late in the third period to snatch away a national championship from the Terriers in 2015.

"Obviously, it was in the back of the mind a little bit," Hickey said, recalling that haunting loss. "Coming into the game, I was pretty excited to exorcise the demons, but then again, it's a different year, different team, different feel to the whole situation. I'm proud of the team, how everyone responded to a tough first period. Still, it means a lot to the five or six guys in the locker room who were there."

Senior winger Nikolas Olsson agreed that winning the title against Providence added even more luster to the win. "That was one of the toughest losses I've ever had in my life, three years ago against Providence in the national championship game," Olsson said. "So coming back in the same building against the same opponent, it makes it more special. They're a formidable opponent and because of our history, and, I guess, our newly-made rivalry, it makes it a lot more special."

"I always wanted to take another crack at Providence, especially in the Garden," senior Chase Phelps said. "For everyone who was on our team my freshman year—us five seniors and the coaching staff—it meant a lot to us. Just looking forward to the next step here."

Nothing has come easy to this BU team, and this title game was no exception. While BU emerged from the first period in a scoreless tie, the whopping 18-9 shot advantage for the Friars was a worry. Fortunately, sophomore goaltender Jake Oettinger followed up a stellar overtime performance against Boston College on Friday with his characteristic composure.

"We weren't taking care of the puck as well as we should've," Hickey said. "There were times when we should've skated into the zone or dumped it in the corner, but I thought we defended well. A lot of the shots came from the outside, and when you have a goalie like Otter, you're going to let them take those shots."

"I'm so proud of Jake and want to congratulate him on his award tonight," Phelps said. "He's been hot for us at the right times, and that's what matters."

That first period helped seal tournament MVP honors for Oettinger, and BU tightened things up considerably after that, allowing only 12 shots the rest of the game. Regardless, the game remained scoreless until the opening minute of the third. Senior Drew Melanson told me on Friday night that his third-period equalizer against BC was the biggest goal of his life, but getting the game-winning goal in the Hockey East Championship means that he probably has a new goal in the top slot tonight.

"I'm really glad we got him on our team," Hickey said. "He's been a pivotal player for us, and he's showed that in the last couple of games."

On Friday night, the Terriers endured a brutal shift during the overtime, as their top line was on the ice for the better part of two minutes as BC controlled the puck and exhausted the BU skaters but couldn't score. With two or three minutes to go tonight, the top line found themselves in a similar position—though not for quite as long. Once again, they bent but didn't break, and Bobo Carpenter's empty-net goal sealed it shortly thereafter.

Those two long shifts this weekend seemed to capture the spirit of this team. "I'll characterize us this year as just resilient, in a word," Olsson said.

"Coach Quinn had a lot do with it," Hickey said of the team's ability to hang tough through adversity. "He's an amazing coach. He's a big guy on camaraderie and acting like a family. We do a lot team-building stuff and do everything together. This year we've created a brotherhood in there, and everyone wants to win it for each other."

"Everyone kind of wrote this team off, and the only people who didn't were the people in the room," Olsson said. "For us, we believed from day one that we did have a really good team on the ice. While other people forgot that and thought otherwise when we had a lackluster record, we still thought we were a good team. It had been a while since we got a sweep, and once we got our first one [over Merrimack in January], we had the mindset that if we won two we would win 10. That rolled into a run."

If BU didn't run the table in the Hockey East tournament, you'd have to say that it was a disappointing year. The program expects to win trophies every season, and they hadn't won any before Saturday. But for any college hockey team, a league championship automatically makes it a very, very good year, as does qualifying for the NCAA tournament. The latter is particularly true this season, as no BU team has ever made the NCAAs when the only way to do so was earning the automatic bid as league champion.

So what's next?  Given that few people expected the team to advance to the national tournament after the first half, you'd have to say that there is very little pressure on them. Better still, there is the conviction that they can play with anyone.

"We just played Providence, who is the seventh-ranked team in the nation right now in the PairWise," Olsson said. "They're a great team, and we went toe-to-toe with them and came out on top. So we look at it as a brand new fresh slate. We're going to try to carry that into whomever we play in the first round."

"People didn't expect us to be there," Hickey said. "We've been playing with our backs against the wall the last three months, so we're used to those high-pressure situations. We have nothing to lose. No one's expecting us to do anything, so we're just going to go in there, play our game, be loose, and see if we can shock some people.

BU has exorcised the demons from its heartbreaking loss in 2015. Free of that burden, who's going to want to play them, and why shouldn't they go further?

As David Quinn would surely say, I like this team.