Re: UNH Wildcats TD Garden and Beyond 2015
Yes. The winner of the ECAC tournament got the only "automatic" bid. The second team to represent the East (remember, they went right to the Final Four, as it was called then) was ALWAYS selected by a committee. It's just that they almost always selected the team that lost the championship game. In this particular scenario, BU was far and away the best team in the country and everyone knew it. They played a stinker and lost in the semifinals. The committee felt that they wanted to send the two teams with the best chance of winning (remember, the East/West thing was insanely fierce at that time - I'm sure you remember the year before when UHN lost on a shot off the face-off, I believe). They couldn't just say, "Sorry, Providence, you made the finals but we're not letting you go. So they set up this "playoff" (which, according to the ticket, was officially called an "NCAA Qualifier Game") at Schneider Arena. I have to say that there weren't a lot of PC fans there and BU won rather easily. You can argue all day about whether it was "fair," but it WAS within the rules. The committee could have just selected BU outright and there would have been outrage in Providence. But NOBODY could argue that PC was better than BU. And as long as that "window" was open, the committee exercised the option. Obviously, as a BU fan, I agreed with the decision. Also, they proved that they were the best and got the committee off the hook by coming through, beating Wisconsin and then BC (in Providence, ironically enough). That was the Wisconsin team with Mike Eaves..they brought 4000 fans to the Providence Civic Center and their full band, all wearing the red cowboy hats with the white "W" on the front. That BU team had Craig, O'Callahan, Silk and Bethel. It was one of the best teams in BU history. One could say, "Yeah, but they didn't win when they had to." Well, not really. If there were a Pairwise then, they would have been a #1 seed. Sort of like this year, where they were the only team that didn't HAVE to win the Hockey East tournament to get to the NCAAs. It brings up the whole concept of the "conference tournament." Which is another discussion for another time. But look at it this way...it's like the B1G conference getting 201 teams into the NCAA basketball tournament when the Patriot league gets one (and if the regular season winner doesn't win their conference tournament, too bad). So not selecting BU that year was basically saying, "Why do we even play the season? Let's just have the tournament - two semi-finals. Why even have the final? The two teams that win the semi-finals go to the NCAAs. You may think this is cynical, but I don't at all. BU proved over the body of work of the long season that they were far and away the best team, and they were given the opportunity to prove it. And they did.
I'm 100% with you on this one, chickod. Remember watching BU beat BC on TV in the Finals. Good times.
I can't let the events of the weekend go by without sharing some thoughts ... anyway, I just read through the following item recapping O'Connor's post-game comments, and would love to get some thoughts from our other posters:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/...oves-costly/swZvbC7EauX0hYTvEwUgUN/story.html
I'm going to give the interviewer who asked O'Connor about the incredibly misplayed Thursday night goal a lot of credit for speaking to the so-called "elephant in the room". I can't comment on O'Connor's entire season, but I do remember him giving up a softie against our beloved UNH early in the HE Semis to give the 'Cats a 1-0 ;lead. Maybe isolated, that's no big deal, as everyone has a bad moment now and then ... but then in the FF semis, the 2nd NoDak goal was at least the equal of the mess he created in the Finals.
I've seen O'Connor credited for standing up to the questioning, which was admittedly a tough thing for anyone to do given what he'd just gone through. But I'm somewhat uncomfortable with some of his comments, including "I think I
deserved 
to play a little bit better in the third in that game" ... or “I felt great on all shots, getting my spots, great rebound control and it was just a
really weird and indecisive moment that cost us the national championship, I guess you could say.’’ And when asked if he had a flashback to the third period of Thursday night’s semis, when he allowed a shorthanded goal after misplaying a puck off the boards ... “Definitely not,’’ O’Connor said. “I thought it was completely different. That one, it hit the boards, bounced off over my stick and was a definitely a different situation completely."
I'll just say this ... not all players can handle the pressure of playing in the biggest games under the brightest of spotlights. Some players rise to the occasion - and clearly, once a glorious opportunity presented itself and there was "blood in the water", PC stormed through and took advantage. Bravo to them. Others do not OR cannot rise to the occasion. None of us see what's going on inside a kid's head, but sometimes you can deduce how someone might be shrinking under the admittedly-intense pressure of a game like last night (or even Thursday night's semi) when you see what are a series of awful plays when a game hangs in the balance.
I do feel badly for O'Connor, as going through something like his two critical gaffes in the FF will likely (sadly) define his career. This was the exposure of a classic "Achilles' heel" for the college hockey world (and beyond) to see. It will be interesting to see if he returns to BU next season (I believe he's a junior?) or turns pro. You have to think his pro outlook took a beating this past weekend.
I feel badly for Coach Quinn, who had to have seen these things happening from time to time, and would probably be lying if he said he hadn't taken notice earlier. But you dance with the goalie who's gotten you through this far - even with the warts - and you hope like heck what did happen last night just doesn't happen. Coach Quinn will likely get another chance ... O'Connor, I'm not so sure.
I feel badly for the rest of the BU kids. They played well enough to be ahead late in the game, and watching their goalie turn a routine play into the ugliest goal I've probably ever seen (or at least in the 48 hours since the semis) will suck the life out of even the best and/or most experienced team, guaranteed (and BU was only the best talent-wise last night). There are goals that just should not and cannot happen, and BU narrowly dodged a bullet in the semis, only to see it happen to them again at the most critical point of the season. Your reaction as a player is then probably to overcompensate by playing beyond your usual system or abilities, just so you don't let the game get decided by your "weakest link", who's just been exposed. And in doing so, you mess up instead, lose inside contain on a routine faceoff ... and then before you know it, you're collecting your NCAA Finalists medals.
The D-1 title was decided by a human being who in a very human moment, let the circumstances of the game overwhelm him. It was painful to watch, and to be honest it is admittedly awkward to write this, as the overriding emotion is empathy or sympathy, and likewise for the BU kids to want to close ranks and share the blame, and say how "it wasn't the winning goal" in the end (and of course statistically it wasn't). But the elephant in the room states the obvious ... and it was the 3rd PC goal that was the deciding goal, as it had the impact of "blood in the water" on both teams. The bedrock trust the BU players needed to believe in their goalie was lost with PC's 3rd goal, as O'Connor's teammates had seen it before 48 hours earlier, and had no reason to think it couldn't/wouldn't happen again.
One can only imagine the implications had this happened to a Coach Umile-led team in the postseason ...
