After Passing First Playoff Test, Terriers Are Set for Hockey East Semifinals
March 18, 2025 | Men's Ice Hockey
by Scott Weighart, GoTerriers.com
BOSTON – Hockey East is always a highly competitive league, but you could definitely make the case that the path to the Lamoriello Trophy has never been more challenging than this season.
Consider the following:
- It seems to be a lock that at least six Hockey East Teams will make the NCAA tournament, matching the league's all-time high in 2016. BU, Boston College, Maine, UConn, Providence and UMass are projected to be in the tournament regardless how what happens the rest of the way.
- If Northeastern wins the Hockey East Tournament, the league will have a whopping seven teams in the 16-team field.
- In the all-important PairWise Ranking system, Hockey East has half of the teams ranked in the top 10 as well as the 11th-ranked team in UMass. The Big Ten has the next most with three teams.
- Northeastern just made league history as the first No. 9 seed to make it the Hockey East semifinals, as the Huskies knocked off No. 1 BC.
- Five different teams have won the last seven Hockey East Championships, with only BU and UMass winning twice.
Given all of that, it's fitting that the Terriers kicked off the postseason with an incredibly hard-fought overtime win over a tenacious UMass team on Saturday afternoon in the Hockey East quarterfinals.
It was classic playoff hockey: The teams looked pretty even in the first period, and the Terriers dominated the second period but emerged with only a slender 2-1 lead. Then the Minutemen got the better of the third period, tying the game up while enjoying a 19-9 shot advantage.
UMass came close to winning in overtime, as defenseman Larry Keenan clanged a shot off of a post. Seconds later, freshman Cole Eiserman raced up the left wing and wisely fired a low shot that beat 6-foot-7 netminder Michael Hrabal through the five-hole for the win.
"It's playoff hockey," sophomore co-captain Shane Lachance said after the game. "They want to win just as bad as us, and obviously it's a really good league, and they're a really good team. For us to weather that storm and respond like that in overtime was huge for us, and it's going to help us moving forward. You're going to be in those tight games, and at the end of the day, we won, and that's all that matters."
The first Terrier goal of the game was one for the highlight reel. Lachance had an initial shot off of a rebound, but the puck came back to him. The problem was that the big winger was on his knees and also at a sharp angle to the night—right on the goal line on Hrabal's stick side. Had Lachance ever scored a goal from his knees?
"Not that I can remember, honestly, I can't say I ever have," Lachance said. "Well, I knew the goalie was down, and I knew he made a good save on me on the first shot when he stuck his paddle there. I kind of looked up quick, and I saw he was hugging the post. Just tried to throw it up there and bank it off his head, his shoulder, whatever I could. Luckily, it worked."
Freshman defenseman Sascha Boumedienne continued his second-semester surge with another terrific game on Saturday. Moments after artfully breaking up a 2-on-1 rush, he buried a one-timer off a nice Jack Hughes pass to make it 2-1 in the second period.
That was all the scoring BU could manage until Eiserman scored his 21st goal of the season, four more than any other first-year player in the nation this year.
"We've got a goal scorer in 34," Lachance said. "He can put a puck in the back in the net, for sure. He's got the best shot I've seen in a while. I don't know how many guys can score five-hole from the top of the circle. That's not an easy shot, and every time he shoots, he's got a chance to score. I just tell him before every game to just keep shooting it."
"With Eiserman, that's just what he does," junior co-captain Ryan Greene added. "He's a clutch player; he's a goal scorer. When he was skating down the side there, I was pretty confident that he was going to find a way to put that home."
First-year goaltender Mikhail Yegorov continued his stellar play, stopping 36 of 38 shots. Since arriving on campus in January, Yegorov has a 1.82 goals-against average (sixth in the nation) and a .937 save percentage (fourth in the nation) in 13 games played.
"Without him, we don't win that game, you know?" Greene said. "It's like a lot of games this year; it just seems like he's in a groove. He's playing so good for us and he's been there to bail us out in every game since he's been here."
"He's comfortable in what he does," Greene continued. "He definitely likes to dial in before games and get in his zone. But once he's out there, it seems like he's playing free and just having fun, and that's when he's at his best."
As BU played the earliest game on Saturday, the Terrier co-captains did not yet know who they would play in the Hockey East semifinals at the TD Garden. We now know that they will play UConn in the early game. But this is not a team that looks to adapt its style to its opponent.
"The message this morning was just we've got to play our game," Lachance said. "We've got to dictate the game, the way we want it to go, and we did a good job with that. Whoever we get, we're going to be ready. We'll definitely plan for whatever they have coming at us, but at the end of the day, it's just about us."
"I don't think we're like really looking for somebody in particular to play," Greene said. "When you're going to TD Garden, you have the top four teams in Hockey East. You know you're going to get a good opponent regardless."
In the regular season, BU had to work to curb a habit of playing poorly in the first game of a weekend series, only to bounce back with a strong performance in the subsequent game. Lachance emphasized that there is no room for that tendency in the postseason.
"We're going to need our best effort every night, and that's a given in the playoffs," Lachance said. "It's one and done, there's no Saturday game if you lay an egg on Friday, so that's been the message the past week or so leading up to this game, and we're just going to continue that—have a good week of practice and then go get them Thursday."
"I think obviously it took us a little bit to figure it out at the start of the year," Greene said. "We had some ups and downs, but I think right now we feel really good about where we're at. We feel confident; we trust each other, and I wouldn't have it any other way right now. I think we're in a great spot."
The Terriers are indeed in a great spot in a league that has really earned the spotlight in college hockey this season.
They have already earned one trophy at TD Garden with February's Beanpot. Holding the Lamoriello Trophy aloft on Friday night would be an especially lofty achievement during this spotlight season for Hockey East.
