Episode 145: Instant reaction to BU's first round win over Vermont

And welcome to another episode of Terrier Hockey Talk.

We are not live.

Unfortunately, we tried very, very hard.

We tried Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, Plan F, Plan Z to get the live stream of $11.

We spent $11 and this spent $11 as well.

And we cannot figure out a way to make it work.

We apologize for the false promise there.

But we do want to at least bring you a pod after BU's first round win over Vermont against

tonight 4-1 victory for the Terriers over the Catamounts.

They are onto the quarter final.

To face Yukon, they'll face them in stores on Saturday 1 p.m.

BU season is still alive.

We still go on one more time.

No more games in the Guinness this season.

But we still have more BU hockey for you.

We're excited to cover that.

But let's keep it tonight.

Lots to talk about.

Obviously, the very situation before the game was a whole thing.

We'll get into that.

And obviously BU kind of has pretty tight game.

It's 1-1 through two periods and then BU pulls away in the third to say their season.

That's Eli.

I'm Sam Eli.

Just give me one takeaway from the game, first of all.

From the game.

From the game?

Yeah.

I think it's kind of in the story all season, right?

It's BU plays well in the first period and then we hear J.P.

and Bothel post games say, I don't know what happened, but we got away from it.

And it kind of took them maybe 25, 30 minutes until midway through the third period when

they did find it.

And it just comes down to puck management, right?

They got a little sloppy in the second period.

It was real bad.

I'm like, looking at you taking your notes and you're like, this is brutal or something

like that.

I forget exactly what you said.

But it was not good.

B was 20 bucks over left and right.

UVM was starting to, you know, generate possession on the offensive zone.

Players were just falling on the ice, I think Titan fell in the power play.

The UVM had a great chance, things like that.

Titan was great though.

We'll talk a little bit about that as well.

But yeah, just kind of good first period.

You go up 1-0, you go down 1-1.

You go up 2-1 and they call it back.

And then it's kind of herky jerky into you, you know, find a goal late there.

Yeah, I thought that the second period just dissolved into like track me.

It was just like rush out the rush out the rush back and forth.

It was kind of a stupid game to be honest.

I remember thinking, you know, this is just bad hockey.

Like, I mean, and this is not to say the Vermont was really much better at all than

BU.

I mean, it was kind of just one of those really like, it was a very typical BU game.

I feel like it was a Vermont team that is solid, but like, it's kind of hard for them to

kind of, you know, impose themselves on opponents, whereas BU is kind of not doing that.

I even, they should be.

So it kind of dissolves into two teams or not really doing much good and it just kind of

ended up being a weird game.

Not to interject real quick, but I did write in one of my takeaways that like Vermont looked

like the worst team in the hockey East.

Yeah.

They weren't great.

And I also said just briefly like, you know, earlier in the early in the season, it was

like, oh, BU is just playing down to their competition.

And I think now like, this is their competition, like these are the teams of their competing

against.

And we can't chalk it up to just a bad night at the office and things like that.

Yeah.

But I do think, I mean, give BU credit for this.

Like, I think that BU found a way to get it back a little bit.

I think obviously the game changing play really is Titan Lawrence's play.

I mean, Coliseum scores the goal, obviously, he's in the low slot wide open and he finishes

it.

But I think this is, that goal was all Titan Lawrence.

Got a bit lucky, right?

Like, he's just forechecking and Vermont's trying to clear the puck up the, up the side

of the boards and they just don't do it well and it goes around to his legs.

But then he just muscles his way through that defender to get to the loose puck.

And then, you know, obviously as a reward is, as a man, it's just chilling wide open

in the low slot and he has an easy centering pass for a pretty routine goal.

There's such a Titan player, right?

I mean, he talked about Titan forever, forever.

And I know everyone's gonna make, you know, he's got one goal and five points and 17

college games and for someone who comes in and, you know, maybe was coming in to beat

the number one pick, NHL draft, it's obviously not gonna cut it, right?

That point production, but Titan's been a very good player, but consistently impactful.

Actually, tweeted out earlier, because BU had, BU didn't have a hockey East all rookie

player this year for the first time since 2006, which is kind of crazy, 20 years.

Think about that.

But I tweeted that he was kind of ironic because he'd be thinking about who had been the

most consistent and impactful for its review this year.

It's been Jonathan Morello, it's been Ben Merrill, and it's been Titan Lawrence since

he got here, and they're all freshmen, right?

So it's kind of interesting.

But yeah, Lawrence is just consistently impactful.

Panda actually said when I asked him tonight, he said that Titan was like the one player that

was going the entire time against him as low and actually playing well, and that's just

a very, not a surprising thing to hear.

Yeah, it's not at all.

I mean, that's just who Titan is.

He's a relentless motor player, high effort player, high can be player.

And it's funny, like, BU brings in a guy who's gonna be a top 10, 15 pick now we just

assume, right now he's still draft, young exporter in college hockey, and what he's really

brought to them is he and maturity and off the puck as the second youngest player in

the country.

He's in August of seven.

And he's insanely young for the sport.

Sometimes it's fantastic this year.

I really have no time for people to think that Titan just hasn't done anything and is

not impacted by you at all.

Obviously, BU has not been any better as a team overall since he got here, but he's been

very impactful.

And this was really his moment.

Like, that was a very, very Titan play.

You know, there were a lot of NHL scouts against tonight as you were kind of walking around

a pretty empty building.

And that's a play that they will know and they will enjoy for sure.

Yeah, I mean, while we're on the Titan Lawrence thing, I want to tell you a little bit about

Cole Liesman, who Titan assisted on that beautiful play.

Five straight games with a goal and he has now, he has eight goals in his last day games.

He has goals in seven out of his last day.

I forget which game he didn't score in, but he's not snake mint anymore, right?

It was his first two goal game with that stretch as well.

It's just been one goal, one goal, one goal.

But these were some very collazement goals for you.

The first one on the top, he scored two play goals too.

We can get into that a little bit too in a second, but the first one, and I asked him

to like, he took two shots, one timers, but earlier in that power play before scoring

and they were just blocked.

And then he takes a third one and that's the one to go in.

So I just asked him about like, you know, is it just kind of your mindset just to keep

shooting until it goes?

And he was, he was like, yeah, like, we don't want to let down with things like even when

the power play is not going well, like it's, like it has been all season, but beautiful

pass from collazement on the goal as well.

And then collazement was just flying everywhere too.

He got lit up early in the game to good.

I would go as far to say it was a hit up high.

Yeah, it was nothing was called, but he stayed down for a second.

Went straight to the bench, never went down the tunnel or anything, came back, but it was

a big hit.

It's not the first big hit he's taken this season too.

He was backscore the first goal and I thought he was flying as well with the puck on a

stick, not on a stick.

And then obviously beautiful pass from time in, but collazement knows where to put the

puck post in it.

And he was great today and I asked Pando after the game, like, you know, obviously collazement

went through a period there in the start of the second semester when he was like completely

snake bit.

And it was two point where he was like whiffing one timers, like it was, it was pretty

bad.

Pando, like, did you ever any doubt that, like, that was going to kind of get shaken off

and that, like, he would start scoring again and he'd get back to what he's always done.

And he was like, no.

And he had the thing with Isman that's interesting and he's had this too, like, Pando

say he didn't actually ask Isman about this when he was going through that stretch, but,

you know, he kind of wondered and the press conference allowed, like, is that the longest

Pando, Isman's ever gone without scoring?

And like, it could be.

And then he mentioned, like, obviously, like for him, like, you know, seven games is not

that is insanely long to not score for everybody else.

It's pretty normal, right?

But like, that's kind of the thing with Isman, that's really interesting.

It's like because his game is so built around one thing.

And I'm not saying that he's entirely one to a player.

I think that he can be impactful and he's been having it tonight.

He was very good in other areas, not just with his shot, but he is a player that he has

a sledgehammer in his toolbox and not much else as opposed to having, like, you know,

all the different tools you could have.

When you are like that, it's just, it's kind of bizarre, right?

Because like, when that sledgehammer is not working for you, it gets kind of weird,

both psychologically for you because, like, this is where your game is built upon, but

also just, like, happening to impact the game beyond that.

It's a struggle, but he's gotten back to a point where, like, when he gets a look,

you feel confidence in going in, right?

Like, he gets that shot in the low slot.

It is, like, you're so open.

You have time to think about it.

Like, it's, like, that is a goal.

You have to score.

It's a grade A plus, plus, plus.

And he easily bears it.

It's a very co-eizorment of him, and I think having him back, right?

Like, be used till not playing great.

I mean, they're not, like, dominating teams to a point where you feel comfortable,

like, because they just have so many chances that eventually ones are going to go in.

So you do need, when you do get a chance for it to go to Isorment, like, you have to bury

that.

And he's given that one again.

So, like, that's what, you know, I was the difference in this game and what was a

pretty evenly matched game between being remote.

I think one of those things, too, that I have the player, like, Isorment is, he's not a

one-tool player, but those two, those other tools kind of get muted when he's

not scoring.

Right?

Because it's easy for him to get down on himself when he's not putting the puck in the

back.

I would say he's a one-tool offensive player.

I think he can provide things defensively and off the puck.

I think that, like, the point I was just going to give you on the puck is really just a

shot.

He's not a great player.

Like, when he's scoring, it's very clear to see him impact the game in other ways.

I think when he's not scoring, you kind of get bogged down on the fact that he's not

scoring.

He's really just a, like, not, I don't want to say a passenger, but, like, invisible

almost.

So I think that when he's scoring goals, it's easy for, it's easier for him, and this just

makes sense, too, when, when you're putting the puck in the back of that, especially when

you're someone like Koizeman, who's second most favorite thing in the world behind his

family is scoring goals.

So when you're doing that, I think it's easier to, you know, get up for a big hit or,

you know, for-check hard or make the right play kind of thing because you know your

capable of scoring.

I think we should talk Vermont, I mean, not Vermont, Yukon, pour it out here and just

kind of, like, what the outlook is on that game, it's, oh, well, yeah, let's do that

again, it's true.

Let's do it while we're first.

Obviously.

So we, I am in life alive, just doing some work.

I was planning to leave at, um, I was, I was, yeah, I was leaving like 5 p.m.

And then I saw that Bavaria, because Marcus, our colleague, who's wonderful, he got to

against before us.

And he got the line shot.

It's not in there.

It was like, oh, that's interesting, right?

And then we had no, we were not aware of, they, B closed practice yesterday, which is

somewhat abnormal.

Right?

It's normally gets to go to practice the day before a game.

So we didn't get to go even though we got to talk to Colizarman after practice yesterday.

So we had no clue.

We, you know, we wouldn't have been able to see an injury, you know, whether or not practicing

yesterday, whatever.

So we kind of sprints through again.

We asked to use SID kind of what the status, what the official status form was.

We got healthy scratch.

So, you know, we reported that there's a lot to unpack there, right?

We're not going to speculate on what it might be, but it obviously is not the greatest

look in the world.

And again, like we don't know the full story.

It could be for a whole variety of reasons.

He was at again, Serena, watching in the stands, and it's more to note, he is not.

He's still at BU.

He isn't left.

Obviously.

It was reported last week that he's going to sign with Chicago after this season.

So we also, obviously, we were aware of that.

That was kind of the plan from the start of the year is what I was told.

The season, I think just what, you know, puts this in such the spotlight is like, yeah,

it's one of your, it's a do or die game.

It's a first round pick.

It's like in the season, it's widely regarded as the best player in the transfer portal

over the off season.

You bring him in.

He's regarded as like a marquee player coming into the season.

Like it's, it just, the season hasn't gone the way I really think or anyone thought

it would, right?

And you look last year, you, I could go on and on with the best conference in college

hockey is, but, you know, leads, UMD and goals, and I, I'm not, I think going to look

like a more points to them, but he leads, he has like 18 goals in 30 something points

as a, as a freshman in the NCHD and first round pick, right?

Like everything is there.

He's doing everything and he comes to being like, oh, like this is a major piece, right?

And that again, just hasn't come to fruition.

We're not going to talk about that because we've talked about it forever, but I think

that's why this fall, I was so big on him, you know, being healthy scratched, obviously,

it got a lot of engagement on the line when we posted things like that.

You know, like people are going to speculate, we, we don't know really kind of what's

going on.

We have nothing to report as far as that goes.

What was interesting about my read, obviously we asked Pando this post game and he said,

I wouldn't necessarily, quote, I wouldn't necessarily say he was a healthy scratch.

He just wasn't available tonight.

I'm going to leave it at that end quote.

And I think that's where we raised an eyebrow.

I, it was, I mean, it was clearly a very kind of trying to get the word for this.

He wanted to brush it off.

He didn't want to talk about it.

Pretty clear.

I don't think he wanted to brush it off, I think, but he definitely didn't want to talk

about it.

And it was a, I'm not, the confrontational is the wrong word, but it was a, it was tense.

Yeah.

For sure.

It was an intense answer.

It was an intense moment in that room.

And again, like, take that what you will, we're just reporting what it felt like.

I'm not saying what that, I'm not speculating.

Yeah.

So it felt like, and it definitely didn't feel like, you know, like, oh, like, he might

have a family issue or something like that.

Like, if it was, you know, a track way missing game, a couple weeks ago, maybe a month

ago now for, you had a death in the family, like, Penelope, you know, quickly reported

that.

Like, if he had something to say, they would kind of, you know, doubt the flames a little

bit about all the speculation.

I think he would.

And he didn't.

I think it's notable.

So again, we don't, I'm in the report as far as like what the reason behind this is.

But that's just kind of what we've seen and what we can, what we can give you there.

I do think, you know, we don't know if he's in a play against Yukon in Saturday.

We didn't ask Penelope.

He was not willing to talk about, rather, beyond thought about it, but he, Penelope was

clearly like, no, I'm not giving you anything else.

So we didn't ask about that.

On Yukon, I think, forget out of here real quick.

Yukon, obviously, is, you know, I think Vermont's a solid team.

I mean, there's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

There's levels.

People know that...

The, like, the New His schedule area.

Er, whatever.

I think Vermont's solid Yukon is definitely better than Vermont.

And you're playing in Jaskano too.

Which is a tight...

Small rank.

Which, you know, I do think it's interesting, though, like obviously if you go to the Schneider

game against Providence, which is also a very small ranking but you did not handle that

well whatsoever.

But then one of the rest of the forms of the year you could argue with Atte Scar aquarium

in October.

Yeah, it was October.

It was real early.

They won 3-1, I think.

Not every high-score in game, they've had a lot of fun.

That was the game where I was running Gaiher as well.

Yeah, that was the game I was running.

So I think that it's interesting to kind of figure out

how BU is handled the small sheets,

because they've done it well once.

They've done it really poorly at the other time.

My first thought about Yukon is that if BU is going to do

what they did in the second period against Vermont,

against Yukon, they're going to pay for it.

And I think that is where even though they win,

and they find a way to advance and survive

and move on whatever, very clearly the underlying tension here

is like, second period was great.

And if you do that again, you're probably

going to pay for it against a better team.

Yeah, and I think, again, we've seen this already.

BU has taken a two-wheel leading against Yukon

and then gotten away from it and gotten destroyed, right?

And it's going to be way harder to refine your game

against the Yukon than it was against Vermont,

just because Yukon is a better team.

And they're also playing to get into the NCAA tournament,

which is something to note as well.

That's true.

That's one of the things that is very interesting.

I was super modest playing for their season in this game,

and their season is over now.

But I think Yukon, they are on the bubble,

as much as you can be on the bubble.

Their capital will be on the bubble.

They need to win this game.

I think if they were to lose in the quarterfinal,

they would be pretty much eliminated.

It's not like confirmed, but they can't lose on Saturday.

And so you're dealing with another elimination game.

The only game really in hockey is not

going to be an elimination game for both teams

that you could play would be a semi-final against Providence

or a final against Providence.

But Providence is just good at that point.

So it's not like you're really gaining much from that.

So the road ahead is very tough.

There's three games left.

You have to win.

It feels like, oh, get this over.

You're shoulder-to-go, three more to go.

It's still such a long way.

We could be here until next weekend.

Or beyond?

Yeah, or beyond, right?

But yeah, I think the clear takeaway here

is that if BU plays, if BU gets away from their game

in the second period, Yukon will make them pay for it.

Because Yukon is desperate and Yukon is good.

That's just the reality of it.

And I would love to sit here and be like,

you know, at the get away from the second period

was a bad day at the office, as you said.

But that has been the thing.

Arguably the most recurring flaw in a season

full of recurring flaws is their inability

to sustain play period to period.

And so you're going to have to bank on BU

just not doing that.

And then finding a way to remain consistent

through 60 minutes against Yukon.

I mean, Yukon, you can't even bank on this

to do anything as well.

But I'll just leave it at that.

I will say, though, Cole isermings scores twice.

Cole isermings scores once.

Time of Lawrence provides a fantastic assist.

Those are your three.

I would argue those are your three most high-end players

on the team.

They might play very well as well.

They might play very well on this game.

Those are your four most high-end players on the team, right?

That wasn't enough to be Vermont.

And like, if you get that performance

from your four most high-end players again,

that can take you places.

Because those are still, you know, as much as we can argue

about the underperformance of Cole isermings,

and then appearance of McHale-Yagurov.

We can talk about Titans points, whatever.

Like, those are still four very, very, very, very,

very, very talented and good players.

And so if they give you what they gave you tonight,

you're kind of always going to have a chance, right?

Because, you know, Cole isermings scored two goals.

And like, two goals is an-and an assist.

An-and an assist.

So yeah, we will see you there.

We will be in stores at the Skanao,

four in the hockey squad, finally.

That's at 1 p.m., so we're going to be on the road early.

For that one on Saturday, we'll see you there,

very excited about it.

Real quick, just very quick prediction for you.

Maybe we'll do like a preview pot of Yukon specifically

before Saturday, but just kind of,

what is your way too early kind of outlook on that game?

They're not going to win.

They're not going to win.

I don't think the score matters.

They're just not going to win with the way they play it tonight.

Against Vermont.

Yeah, you know, predictions are predict predictions.

They're kind of, they exist to be wrong in a sense.

But what I can tell you is that if they play like the way

they did tonight, they will probably lose.

Because Yukon is just going to make them pay for that.

However, they play the way they played at the Skanao

in October, which is so long ago now.

Probably win.

So we will see.

Cool.

All righty, thanks for listening.

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