Boston University's men's hockey team will play in the Frozen Four today, college hockey's equivalent of the Final Four, as the first local team to possibly win since 2015. They'll be taking on the number one overall ranked team, the Minnesota Golden Gophers in Tampa. The 5 p.m. game will be broadcast on ESPN2. GBH sports reporter Esteban Bustillos joined Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to talk about the team's run. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Paris Alston: I really should know way more about this considering I am a grad student at BU, I'm a Terrier. It is my team, right? I should be rooting for them enthusiastically. But for those of us who need to be caught up to speed, Esteban, how did the Terriers season go and what brought them to this point?
Esteban Bustillos: It was a bit of a winding road for the Terriers to arrive in Tampa. They had a pretty solid regular season but lost their first game in the Beanpot to Northeastern to kick off a four game late-season losing streak, which is not necessarily ideal. But since losing the last game of that slide, BU hasn't lost. Their nine-game win streak is currently the longest in the country. They won the Hockey East tournament here at TD Garden last month against Merrimack in the championship, 3-2 in overtime, and then beat Western Michigan and Cornell in the NCAA tournament in New Hampshire to punch their ticket to the Frozen Four. Speaking to the press last week, BU coach Jay Pandolfo praised his team for what they've been through to get here.
[Previously recorded]
Jay Pandolfo: They've worked together and we found our game again in the last month or so, so I'm really proud of them. Went through a little bit of a stretch there in mid-February, we weren't at our best. You know, we've come out the other side. One of our team goals of the year was to get to the Frozen Four and see what happens there. And I give our guys a ton of credit.
[Recording ends]
Jeremy Siegel: And so the coach, Pandolfo — he has some experience on his end as a player in the Frozen Four, right?
Bustillos: Yeah, that's right. Pandolfo, who is actually just in his first year as head coach with BU, helped take the Terriers to four straight Frozen Fours during his college days and a national championship in 1995. He then went on to win two Stanley Cups in a 15-year NHL career. He says the tournament is very difficult to win.
[Previously recorded]
Pandolfo: I was very fortunate to be able to participate in four of them as a player, but we only won one. That tells you how hard it is. And we had some really good teams. But you know, the margin for error in each game is slim. So you have to make sure you're dialed in and you're ready to play the right way and you have to limit your mistakes. And the biggest thing is you really can't beat yourself. I think that's the most important thing.
[Recording ends]
"I was very fortunate to be able to participate in four of them as a player, but we only won one. That tells you how hard it is."-BU Men's hockey coach Jay Pandolfo
Alston: It sounds like the stakes are much higher than they are for, say, the Beanpot.
Bustillos: Yeah.
Alston: And hockey is huge around here, Esteban. Tell us a little bit about what this moment means for the players.
Bustillos: So it's a big deal. Unlike the men's and women's basketball tournaments, there are only 16 teams in the men's hockey bracket. But it's still a major accomplishment to get to the Frozen Four. And for a team like BU, it's something of an expectation to make this a regularly scheduled appearance. Jamie Armstrong is a senior forward for the Terriers from Rhode Island. For him, getting to the Frozen Four was like a dream.
[Previously recorded]
Jamie Armstrong: Coming to BU, you know the teams in the past have been in those moments, but you don't realize how much work goes into it until you go four years here and, you know, you really haven't won anything or went anywhere. So to get to that moment and to move on to Tampa is something that has been amazing for me personally. And it was just kind of surreal.
[Recording ends]
Bustillos: This will be the 23rd time that BU has made it to the Frozen Four.
Siegel: So like Paris, I don't know a ton about hockey. I grew up in in Ohio, where it's not the biggest sport. Usually when you think of ice hockey, two places you think of are New England, Boston, and the upper Midwest, places like Minnesota or Wisconsin. And the team's opponent in this is the number one team in America, the Minnesota Golden Gophers. What do we know about about their opponent here?
Bustillos: They're number one for a reason, right? They have a 28-9-1 record so far, and ranked in the top 10 in both scoring defense and scoring offense, so dangerous on both sides. They also have a historic rivalry with the Terriers. The two schools first played each other in 1963 and have met over two dozen times, including eight times in the NCAA tournament. Minnesota has a 5-3 postseason advantage over BU, but the Terriers beat them in the Frozen Four in 1994 and 1995. And in 1971, BU beat the Golden Gophers in the national championship game for the program's first national title. Speaking yesterday, Pandolfo was looking forward to the matchup.
[Previously recorded]
Pandolfo: I know the rivalry in the '70s was, you know, talked about a lot. I know we played them in '94, '95. I don't remember it being as big a rivalry then, just because we didn't see them other than that one game. I think back then they played a little bit more of a regular basis. So yeah, it's always fun to beat a big program like Minnesota. So hopefully we can have the same result tomorrow.
[Recording ends]
Alston: What would a championship mean for BU if they are able to win?
Bustillos: It would be historic. BU has five chips overall and the last one came in 2009. A sixth ring would give them one more than their rivals down Comm. Ave., BC, and give them one more than Minnesota. Jamie Armstrong is well aware of the history the team carries.
[Previously recorded]
Armstrong: We want to bring BU back to what makes BU BU, right? All of our coaches here, for the most part, have played a national championship and won a national championship. So that's been the standard here for so long. And I think it means to our class, we just want to live up to that standard and that expectation and, you know, to be a part of that at the end of the day.
[Recording ends]
