Women's Hockey: Too Many Late Game Collapses

by Kai Barner

For a sports fan, there is nothing more frustrating than watching your team’s inability to close the door at the end of the game. Instead of letting you relax with the satisfaction that they’ve won long before the clock ticks down to zero, it sits back and watches the door fly back open and let the other team charge back through. But looking at all of the polls and rankings heralding the high expectations for your squad coming into the year, only to see it turn squandering late-game leads into their modus operandi through three consecutive outings early in the season – that’s in a league of its own for being downright unbearable.

I’ve seen this BU team enter the final period with one, two and three score leads, and in every case, it lets the end of the game become much more interesting than it should have been. Interesting is fine – if you win. Or a tough loss/tie can at least be palatable if you can go home at the end of the day satisfied that you gave it your best effort. But having games in hand and then watching the lead slip through your fingers, especially when you’re finding new ways to do it and with each new way worse than the last – that taste is about as bitter as it gets.

To recap: the Terrier women’s ice hockey team’s performances through two periods so far this season: 1-0 in the season opener against Ohio State, 4-2 in a rematch with the Buckeyes a day later, and 3-0 against Robert Morris this past Friday. But in each case, third period penalties and miscues got in the way of the Terriers closing the door, with each collapse worse than the game prior.

Sophomore defenseman Carly Warren’s (’12) minor for cross-checking allowed the Buckeyes to tie the opener. Freshman forward Shannon Mahoney’s (’13) roughing and senior defenseman and co-captain Sarah Appleton’s (’10) tripping call 22 seconds into the ensuing power play gave the Buckeyes an extended 5-on-3 in the second game. Ohio State would score on the 5-on-3 and the continuation of Appleton’s ('10) penalty to even the game. Although both games went down in the books as ties instead of shootout losses (Ohio State won the shootouts after each game 2-1), that couldn’t have been much of a consolation for the Terriers.

Then against Robert Morris, sophomore defenseman Tara Watchorn (’12) was given a five-minute major for roughing. The Colonials promptly went to work – scoring two goals on the power play (major penalties do not end when a goal is scored) and riding the momentum swing to tie the game at 3-3 just three minutes later to mark the third straight Terriers third period collapse. Luckily, the overtime play of junior forward Lauren Cherewyk (’11) and sophomore defenseman Kasey Boucher (’12) was able to pull out the late win for the Terriers.

“You find different ways to cause yourself agony, and we found a new way by taking a major penalty,” Head Coach Brian Durocher said after Robert Morris. “We have to figure out that: a) we’re a team, and b) we’re responsible for our actions. [Though] I don’t think that Tara was terribly responsible [for her actions] at that point (RMU’s Brianna Delaney was also given a roughing at the time, though Delaney’s was just a two-minute minor).”

One of the things that Durocher reiterated after every game was that closing the deal on the road is a lot harder than it is at home, and the Terriers will now have plenty of opportunities to find that out first hand.

They’ll be going on the road for the first time this season with a two-game series at Wayne State, the opening act of five straight away from Walter Brown. The stretch also includes No. 10 St. Lawrence (the Terriers edged up to No. 9 in yesterday’s poll), No. 4 Clarkson, and Providence – which is the top unranked team receiving votes and a squad that BU went winless against in three games last year.

Wayne State may be the lowest profile team on the road swing, in part because they’re sitting at 0-1-1 after a 3-2 loss and 0-0 tie their opening weekend at RPI, but the Warriors were ranked third with one first-place vote in the preseason CHA coaches’ poll behind Robert Morris and Mercyhurst – who has yet to be knocked out of the top spot in USA Today’s national rankings so far this season.

“Hopefully we learn lessons and we find some points that we can work on to continue to make ourselves a three-period team – not two-and-change or something like that,” Durocher said about his team moving forward.

Internalizing lessons like these, putting intention into action, and snapping out of an established behavior pattern is easier said than done though – look at the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. There are some very interesting similarities between the Terriers first three games of the season and the Steelers from weeks 2-4 of the NFL schedule.

To begin with, the first two paragraphs of this piece can equally apply to the Steelers (at least from my point of view as a die-hard Steelers fan).

They let the Chicago Bears make up a touchdown deficit in the 4th quarter and lost the game 17-14 in Week 2. Their follow up performance was squandering an 11-point lead against the Cincinnati Bengals, letting Carson Palmer take his team on two long touchdown drives and convert on a huge 4th-and-10 bind on the way to the game-winning score in Week 3. Then in Week 4, the Steelers very nearly let the San Diego Chargers eat right through a 21-point lead, and were in pretty dire straits until Big Ben Roethlisberger and Rashard Mendenhall came through on offense to put the game back out of reach.

The Steelers games perfectly mirror the one, two, and three score leads that the Terriers gave up in games in which they were favored, and in that same order no less. And if you want to go the extra mile, Cherewyk (’11) and Boucher (’12) even compare with Roethlisberger and Mendenhall respectively.

Cherewyk, as the seasoned veteran, would naturally be Roethlisberger. Boucher, as a second-year player picking the perfect time to break out for the first two scores of her collegiate career (plus the assist on Cherewyk’s game-winner), almost perfectly reflects Mendenhall – a second-year pro who scored his first two NFL touchdowns against the Chargers and was instrumental on the game-clinching drive.

In the final turn of the eerie similarity between the teams, this past Sunday (Week 5), the Steelers took on the Detroit Lions. Likewise, the Terriers are going to be in Motor City this weekend when they play Wayne State.

Even playing the lowly Lions though, the Steelers still came too close for comfort to another late-game collapse.

At this point, the Terriers can’t afford to take anyone lightly either.

If they want to reaffirm their top-10 ranking coming into the year, now is the time for a statement weekend.