A look back at the Frozen Four

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the Miami Redhawks locker room after a crushing loss at the hands of Boston University, the faces of each player looked as though they all had just lost a member of the family. The scene was as intense as anyone could ever experience. Players sat in disbelief over what just occured on the ice. The Redhawks were one minute away from being called national champions. It all went away in the blink of an eye. Over in the Boston Terriers locker room was a bunch of college kids who were dancing and singing and laughing up what was an unbelievable victory, one that not only will both teams never forget, but those sitting at home watching the game on ESPN, or in attendance at the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. The Boston University Terriers are national champs once again. The Redhawks on the other hand, especially the seniors, know they were one minute away from being called the same. When BU pulled their goalie with 3:30 left in the game, all looked lost, but Zach Cohen got the Terriers to within one at the 19 minute mark of the third period. Than, Nick Bonino tied the score at three with just 18 seconds left when he one-timed a pass from Chris Higgins, and blew a shot by Miami goalie Cody Reichard’s glove hand for the tie. Colby Cohen became the hero of the night when his blast that was deflected into the air by a sliding RedHawk. The puck deflected into the air, and floated by goaltender Cody Reichard at the 11:47 mark of overtime to give the Terriers a 4-3 victory over Miami and give BU it’s fifth national championship, and first since 1997. The words of the late Jim McKay never rang more true on this night. “The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.” Both teams shared their feelings after the game. You wouldn’t have blamed anyone from Miami if they didn’t come out for the press game news conferences, but they did. It was a tough loss to take. Still, a job had to be done. Below are quotes from the post games press conferences on what was an incredible night for all involved. First up, Boston University’s Head Coach jack Parker. Needless to say his opening statement said if all for everyone involved. “Wow. What a hockey game. What a finish. The finish made it an unbelievable game, obviously. And all I can think of is, that it’s the greatest game comeback I’ve been involved in, the greatest comeback I’ve been involved in. When we lost the ’91 championship after being down by three goals, we came back, tied it up late in the third period, I mean real late, and went into triple overtime before we finally lost the game.” “I was thinking about that tonight. Because we spent so much emotion those last couple minutes when we pulled the goalie and got the goals, but the team was so jacked up when we went into the dressing room. I didn’t want to leave it all there.” “The only thing I can say, we won that game because big-time players make big-time plays, and the guy sitting next to me made an unbelievable play to get it over to Bonino to get that goal. And we were real fortunate for the one before that. We were just dogging it.” “When we pulled the goalie — I’ve never used Colby Cohen 6 on 5 before. I put him out there because of his size and effort and how well he was playing tonight. And he goes out and gets the goal to get us back in it. In my mind, players do something that needed to get done and it wasn’t my doing. I’m so proud of them.” Cohen then spoke about the game winning goal “Well, I mean, for starters, the goal Kevin shot and (indiscernible) makes a great play, rolls the blueline just like we’ve done a lot this year, leaves it for me. And I’m getting close to scoring some goals this weekend and I’ve been hitting a couple of bars, and I just let it go and I saw it get blocked and go up over the goalie’s glove. And I saw it go in and that was it. I don’t remember anything after that. And just an unbelievable feeling.” “I don’t know. I saw a guy coming at me, and I thought about trying to fake and going around the guy, but the ice was already a little chewed up at that point.” Teammate Nick Bonino quipped “Colby, you closed your eyes.” “I closed my eyes and shot it and here we are right now.” said Cohen in response. “I was just trying to shoot it towards the net. Take a slap shot and get it to the net and hope for a rebound. But got lucky, I guess.” “We were kind of just keeping our heads up. We’ve been on an even keel all year. We don’t get too high and we don’t get too low. And, I mean, the seniors are going down the bench. Everyone was just kind of getting accountable. And we knew what we had to do. We didn’t want to count ourselves out yet. And national championship is up for grabs, we’re not going to stop until the last buzzer sounds. I think we kind of proved that we’re a resilient bunch and we’re going to do everything we can to tie it up and hopefully push it to overtime.” Hobey Baker award winner Matt Gilroy also took questions in regards to winning the national championship and winning the Hobey in the same year. “No, from the start of this year, what this team has done and what we’ve committed to the team, and we got here, I think everyone August 31st, and we went through testing and we used to run the river twice a week, 5:00 in the morning. It was horrible.” Coach Parker had to temporarily scold his star defenseman “Stop whining about it” Parker said in Laughter. “It just brought us closer together, and to see Colby score, I didn’t even see it go in but just the bench, it was unreal and it’s something the senior class will never ever forget.” Neither will anyone else for that matter,especially Miami Coach Enrico Blasi”Obviously I want to congratulate BU in winning, and it was a heck of a hockey game and somebody’s gotta lose, and unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be for us. They played great. They executed at the end, and I thought it was a great college hockey game. Probably the way it should be.” Tommy Wingels spoke about comforting his goaltender who took the loss the hardest as soon as the puck got past him for the game winning goal “I don’t know. So much going through your head. I just told Cody it just wasn’t meant to be and I’m just so proud to be your teammate and to be a RedHawk. And that’s why I’m wearing my jersey right now; I’m sure that’s why Brian is. We’re just so happy to be part of Miami’s hockey team.” Brian Kaufman was the player the puck deflected off of for the game winner. “Yeah, there was definitely still a good amount of confidence. We felt it was the same thing going into the third period, tie game, it was going to take one shot to win it. We were confident we were going to be able to go out and do that, whether it took one minute or a couple more periods, but obviously it just didn’t work out that way.” “There was that timeout and then obviously BU pulled the goalie. Did they do anything different from that point on or did it feel different from that point on?” “No, not really,” said Kaufman. “I mean, they just worked hard and got everything in the net. With one extra guy you can’t cover everybody. And they did a great job of, like I said, getting pucks to the net and getting traffic and getting everybody there to get the rebounds.” For coach Blasi, he wouldn’t have changed a thing. “I can tell you we had the right guys on the ice. We knew exactly what they were going to do. We were trying to keep our guys focused. They executed. You know, tried to keep our guys up, and unfortunately, they got caught up in the moment and BU made a play that we talked about on the bench, actually. So it’s one of those things. You know, they played great. I thought our guys — I’m so proud of the way our guys played, right into overtime. I didn’t see the final goal. But I can tell you I’m proud of our guys.” “What do you do, Kevin makes a great play, sacrifices his body, goes over Cody’s head and into the net. That’s what happens in overtime, you know? And you give — let’s not take anything from BU’s win, too. They played great. They executed when they had to. And the game in overtime could have gone either way. I’m proud of the way they played tonight. We didn’t get the bounce at the end.” “In my heart, and I know in a lot of hearts around campus and alums and supporters, they’re national champions in our book. So it’s going to sting for a while, but, like I said earlier, the accomplishments that we have garnered over the last few weeks, you know, we made history and hopefully we can continue that into the future.” Trust me, no one on planet earth will feel there was a loser on this night. Tonight the sport of hockey won big. BU might have one the big trophy, but Miami won a lot of respect, and so did the sport. This season might be over, but it cant come soon enough for the rest of us to watch it unfold all over again. Contact the author at Brian.Jennings@prohockeynews.com