For the second year in a row, a Hockey East team from Boston fell to a team from the NCHC in the NCAA men’s hockey national championship game.
This year, it was Boston University. The Terriers’ dream NCAA tournament came to a nightmare end Saturday night in St. Louis, with Western Michigan running away in the third period for a 6-2 victory and the program’s first national title.
Last year, Denver beat Boston College in the final.
The Terriers were in the Frozen Four for a third straight year, making it 3-for-3 under the leadership of head coach Jay Pandolfo. After losing in the semifinals the previous two years, they finally got over that hump with Thursday’s win over Penn State and returned to the championship game for the first time since 2015.
But, they remain in search of their sixth national title, and first since 2009, succumbing to a Broncos team on Saturday that had been one of the most consistent and most well-rounded teams in the country all season.
The Terriers were anything but consistent for much of the season. They started slow and struggled to keep the puck out of their net, but the midseason addition of freshman goalie Mikhail Yegorov gave them a major boost in goal and began their second-half turnaround.
They knocked off archrival BC to win the Beanpot, but came up short in the Hockey East tournament with a disappointing no-show against UConn in the semifinals.
BU bounced back well from that loss, though, blowing out Ohio State in the first round of NCAAs before then beating Cornell in overtime in the second round and holding an explosive Penn State offense to one goal in Thursday’s semifinal.
Western Michigan proved to be too much to handle, though. The Broncos’ checking game forced too many BU turnovers, leading to some extended zone time and costly odd-man rushes. The Terriers’ offensive stars couldn’t dazzle against Western Michigan’s stout team defense, and Yegorov wasn’t quite his usual brick wall self in BU’s net.
The Broncos opened the scoring just 1:38 into the game when Wyatt Schingoethe tipped in a shot from the point after BU lost a couple defensive-zone battles.
The Terriers answered a little over five minutes later, with freshman Cole Eiserman (a 2024 Islanders first-round pick) jamming in a rebound in the crease for his 25th goal of the season. It was the fourth goal in four NCAA tournament games for Eiserman, a Newburyport native.
Western Michigan retook the lead late in the first. After an offensive-zone turnover by the Terriers, the Broncos took off on a 3-on-2 the other way. While the initial shot off the rush missed the net, defenseman Cole Crusberg-Roseen, a native of Stratham, New Hampshire, followed up the play and fired a shot past Yegorov.
The Broncos then made it 3-1 just over five minutes into the second period. A lost battle in the neutral zone handed Cam Knuble (son of former Bruin Mike Knuble) a clear path to the BU net, and while Yegorov made the initial save, Ty Henricks was right there to bury the rebound.
The Terriers got it back to one midway through the second with a power-play goal, and it once again came by banging away in front. Ryan Greene’s shot from the point wasn’t covered cleanly by Western Michigan goalie Hampton Slukynsky, and sophomore captain Shane Lachance managed to poke the loose puck over the line. The Broncos challenged the goal, believing that Lachance had used his stick to push Slukynsky, but the initial call stood after review.
Each team got a power play late in the second period, but neither could score, sending the game to the third with Western Michigan leading 3-2.
The Terriers had a couple great chances to tie the game early in the third period, but couldn’t quite finish. They came within inches on another net-front jam session, with a Matt Copponi chance getting stopped on the line by defenseman Joona Vaisanen, who was simply lying down across the goal line.
The backbreaker came from Western Michigan a few minutes later. After Cole Hutson whiffed on the puck in the offensive zone, Owen Michaels raced in 2-on-1 the other way and snapped a shot stick-side past Yegorov.
The Terriers came close to making it 4-3 with 8:04 remaining, with Copponi again jamming in the crease. He did eventually poke the puck over the line after a Nick Roukounakis shot, but the whistle had already blown while it was under Slukynsky’s pad. Pandolfo challenged the play, but the initial call stood, resulting in the Terriers losing their timeout.
That would prove to be the Terriers’ last gasp. Schingoethe set up Iiro Hakkarainen to make it 5-2 with 3:58 remaining, and then Michaels added an empty-netter for his fourth goal in two games in the Frozen Four.