ANNIKA MORRIS | BHB PHOTOGRAPHER
Luisa Welcke celebrates after scoring a go-ahead goal in the second period of last season’s Hockey East semifinal against Boston College. The goal was called back after an official review, but the Terriers went on to win in double overtime before beating Northeastern University in the final.
BY SAM ROBB O’HAGAN BHB Co-Director
The recorder isn’t even on. Not yet. Bret Gilmour and I are on a Zoom call. The Boston University women’s ice hockey goaltender’s coach just finished a hockey clinic, and now he’s in his office, practically chomping at the bit. We’re here to talk about Tara Watchorn.
The head coach, who starts the third season of her tenure Friday, has authored one of the most remarkable, against-theodds turnarounds in college hockey.
When she returned to her alma mater in April 2023, BU was reeling: two straight losing seasons, no playoff wins in four years and a group of players that — by the admission of Julia Shaunessy, a then-senior — had developed a negative connotation with, well, everything.
Now? BU is the defending Hockey East champion.
The whole concept of this story is to figure out how in the world Watchorn pulled that off, and I explained this to Gilmour. Before I even asked my first question, Gilmour had his answer.
“She is Ted Lasso,” he said, laughing. “That’s probably one of the best ways to explain it.”
I’d never thought of Watchorn as a Lasso-adjacent figure, even though her time at BU has been defined by winning with a team that no one thought could.
Watchorn — it should be noted — is still one of the best hockey players in the school’s history and an Olympic gold medalist. When she first returned to BU as an assistant coach in 2017, her main role was skill development, and she is — without question — a hockey nerd.
You can find an hour-long podcast she hosted titled “Strategies for Efficient Line Changes,” a video of her scribbling on a whiteboard about something called “2-on-2 constraints” and a 30-minute talk she gave on how to build and sustain momentum within a hockey game.
Continued on page 4
In collaboration with the Boston Hockey Blog
“On the plane ride coming back from Wisconsin, they’re like, ‘We’re going to be here next year.’”
Development U: BU men’s hockey sends 100th player to NHL
BY ELI CLOUTIER BHB Co-Director
Boston University men’s hockey has a rich history with traditions dating back to the program’s first game in 1918, and five national championship banners hanging from the ceiling at Agganis Arena to show for it.
Despite contending annually, it’s been over 15 years since the last banner was raised. Still, year after year, the best players choose to bear the Scarlet and White.
Why? Because playing for BU is a springboard to playing professional hockey. Head Coach Jay Pandolfo — who himself was a Terrier and followed by a long NHL career — said the goal of “almost 100%” of players who come to BU is to reach the NHL.
On April 17, Devin Kaplan, a former three-year player, became the 100th former Terrier to play in an NHL game. That number trails only Minnesota, Michigan and North Dakota. Additionally, 25 former Terriers played during the
Continued on page 4
ANNIKA MORRIS | BHB PHOTOGRAPHER
Goalie Mikhail Yegorov in the tunnel during last season’s NCAA regional final against Cornell University. BU won the game in overtime, punching its ticket to its third Frozen Four in as many seasons under Jay Pandolfo.
BY HENRY DINH-PRICE BHB Writer
Gavin McCarthy, a junior at Boston University, was on the ice as soon as he started walking.
BU men’s hockey’s newest team captain’s love for the sport started with a backyard ice rink in Ballston Spa, New York. Each winter, the 40-by-60foot rink — built by his grandfather, who is a carpenter, and his father, Joe — became the area where McCarthy and his two older brothers, Case and Aiden, spent all of their time.
When McCarthy first made use of the backyard rink, he wore a pair of double runners — training skates with two blades instead of one for added stability — and pushed around a skating trainer. His brothers utilized him as an obstacle to deke around until he fell asleep on the ice.
By 3 or 4 years old, he was skating around with his older brothers, and no one could tear the three of them off the ice.
“They were out every single morning … and every single day after school, into the night,” Joe McCarthy said.
Case McCarthy recalled spending “hours upon hours” on weekends outside on the backyard rink.
“We didn’t want to come inside,” he said. “I think that’s where our love for hockey, all three of us, really, really sparked.”
When he wasn’t in the backyard, McCarthy spent his early childhood
following his older brothers from rink to rink when they began playing competitive hockey. His favorite parts of those games were the Zambonis. He made a habit of not leaving the rink after one of his brother’s games until the Zamboni was fully off the ice.
Since arriving at BU, McCarthy has continued to follow in the footsteps of Case.
When he arrived on Commonwealth Avenue in 2023, he opted to wear the number two, the number Case had worn for the first four years of his Terrier career. When McCarthy joined the team, Case switched to number seven.
“It was funny because his freshman year, everyone thought Gavin was me, and I was Gavin,” Case said.
If you were to walk into BU’s locker room, you would see a history of the number in every player’s stall, listing every Terrier that wore that same number. McCarthy’s name is listed at the end — right below his brother’s.
“I think it’s pretty cool being able to see his name, then my name,” McCarthy said.
Now McCarthy is following in the footsteps of Case — once again — as he prepares to wear the same “C” his older brother did two seasons ago.
“It’s obviously pretty cool being able to follow him up,” McCarthy said. “I definitely used [Case] a lot over the past couple years, and he’s kind of given me some great advice.”
Gavin and Case McCarthy are the fourth pair of brothers to serve as BU captains — and first since Mike Pandolfo (2001-02) and current head coach Jay Pandolfo (1995-96).
“It’s a proud older brother moment, for sure,” said Case of McCarthy’s captain selection.
After the entirety of last season’s leadership group — Shane Lachance, Ryan Greene, Devin Kaplan and Quinn Hutson — departed to sign entry-level NHL contracts, it was fair to ask where the leadership would come from.
That decision, however, was not difficult for the team to make.
“It was unanimous from our players,” said Pandolfo of McCarthy being selected captain. “He just has good leadership qualities, does things the right way, wants to win, cares about his teammates.”
Those leadership qualities can be traced back to McCarthy’s time with the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks. In his second season in Muskegon, a change in ownership and trades led to parting ways with the coach, the team’s captain and one of the assistant captains, leaving a void for the remaining players to step up as leaders.
It soon became clear McCarthy possessed natural leadership qualities that drew his teammates to him.
His competitiveness and the desire to win were infectious within the Muskegon locker room. It became easy for players to follow McCarthy’s
lead.
“Reading that he was named the next captain of BU wasn’t surprising at all for anybody who was in Muskegon,” said Parker Burgess, who was promoted from the Lumberjacks’ associate head coach to head coach in that season.
At just 20 years old, as of June 2, McCarthy is the thirdyoungest captain in BU program history.
McCarthy’s captaincy has also been part of the larger discussion surrounding BU’s agerelated concerns.
While the team has a nation-leading 19 NHL draft selections, the Terriers have zero returning seniors and 12 incoming freshmen. It is an increasingly young squad amid a time of growing chatter over whether younger
teams with high-end talent can win a championship.
McCarthy’s response to the critics:
Experience is more than just age.
“As upperclassmen, we have that experience. We’ve been there,” he said. “I’m not worried about it. I think we’re going to be in a great spot.”
For Joe, watching two of his sons grow into captains of BU hockey is a dream come true.
“It’s, for sure, surreal,” Joe said. “To have the leadership they have, it’s nice to see the men that they’re growing into and to have that kind of integrity and responsibility.”
ANNIKA MORRIS | BHB PHOTOGRAPHER
Junior defenseman and captain Gavin McCarthy during a game against UMass last season. McCarthy’s older brother Case captained BU during the 2023-24 season. They are the fourth set of brothers to captain the Terriers.
BY ELI CLOUTIER BHB Co-Director
Hockey almost didn’t happen for Maeve Carey. George Carey, her father, had coached her older brother Georgie in the sport for more than a decade. He knew the “business” of the sport and didn’t want another child in it. Plus, Carey was thriving playing basketball and soccer.
So she had to force her father’s hand.
“She said, ‘If you don’t give me a chance to try hockey, I’m going to quit my other sports,’” George explained. “I was like, ‘There’s a 9-year-old girl challenging me.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, here we go.’”
Reluctantly, he signed Carey up for Learn to Skate. When she started, she was the “worst skater on the ice,” according to George. But, months later, when the class concluded, Carey was the best.
“I just had never felt this way for another sport,” Carey said. “I had never felt the way I feel when I get on the ice.”
That’s who Carey is. She’s fierce, she’s determined and she’s not afraid to voice an opinion.
Boston University Head Coach Tara Watchorn, who also coached Carey at Stonehill University before she transferred to BU, remembers being “deathly afraid” of her during the Stonehill recruiting process.
BU senior defender Maeve Kelly said Carey has an “intimidating presence about her.” That’s what’s fueled her to where she is today.
After playing her first two collegiate seasons with the Skyhawks, Carey entered the transfer portal with
one place in mind — BU.
Having grown up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, BU was a longtime dream school. Playing in the Beanpot and Hockey East were always goals.
“When that opportunity was available to me, I knew for everything I had to take it. I couldn’t even second guess about it,” she said.
It didn’t take long for Carey to feel at home at BU given her familiarity with Watchorn and BU
Assistant Coach Megan Myers, who also coached her at Stonehill — but still, there were nerves. She felt like a freshman all over again, so she put her head down and got to work. That didn’t go unnoticed.
“She was open to anything and everything,” Kelly said.
“She was just so mature, and the way she went
about everything, she carried herself immensely well. That is such a nerve-wracking thing, coming into a completely new environment.”
Her presence from the getgo at BU wasn’t surprising to Watchorn and Myers. Carey, as a person and player, is respected by her teammates. She came into last season and “ran with the team culture,” Myers said. Carey has fun with the team, but when push comes to shove, she’ll get down to it.
“You should see her in the gym,” Myers added. “She’s an animal. Off the ice, she pushes everyone to be better.”
Flash forward 13 years, and Carey’s ultimatum to her father has proved to be worth it — she’s now the captain of the Boston University women’s hockey team.
The way Carey is off the ice is exactly the way she is on it. In fact, she had to tone the aggressiveness down when she arrived at BU.
In her last season as a Skyhawk, Carey totaled 71 penalty minutes, the second-highest mark in the country for the 2023-2024 season.
Myers went as far as to say that she was “kind of a hothead.”
Carey explained that as a younger player, she was the type to “get angry with my own play and then take that out on others.” She took time to reflect and to work on herself.
“That would lead to my penalties at Stonehill, but here at BU, the first time I got a penalty, I was so anxious in the box. I felt so bad for my teammates,” she said.
missed the end of last season with an injury.
Carey knew she had to find a balance between that aggression and physicality to stay out of the penalty box. It wasn’t easy, but she found that balance, recording only 14 penalty minutes in 32 games last season. She scored just six points in her first year as a Terrier, but she became more secure in her play as the
season progressed. Her breakout game came against Providence Feb. 8, when she scored her first goal at BU and recorded an assist. She was gaining confidence game after game, and the results were a reflection of that.
“She was just learning to trust herself and to trust her game,” former BU Assistant Coach Reagan Rust said.
Two games later against New Hampshire Feb. 15 — in the heat of the race for the Hockey East regular season title and on the way to BU’s best season in a decade — Carey tore her MCL and PCL, ending her season.
It was the first major injury of her athletic career. Carey described it as “one of the hardest things I have dealt with as an athlete.”
“She’s a kid that just does not cry. When you’re hurt in hockey, you get up, [but] she wasn’t [getting up],” George said. “I think she was more scared than hurt, to be quite honest with you.”
Carey credits her coaches and teammates for their support during the rehabilitation process. Even though she physically couldn’t be with the team on the ice, she remained present every day. She said watching BU win the Hockey East championship against Northeastern was “just as sweet, whether you’re on or off the ice.”
But don’t let her fool you — she wanted to be out there battling with her teammates “very badly.”
As of September, Carey is back, “fully 100 percent.” And she’s itching to play.
BU announced July 7 that Carey would captain the Terriers for the 2025-26 season. She’s the first transfer to be named captain since Rust in 2018-19 and the fifth in program history.
“It’s just such a huge honor, especially following in the footsteps of so many great leaders here at BU,” she said. “I don’t even know how to put it into words.”
Carey calls herself a “do as I do, not as I say” type of leader. She enjoys grinding “in the trenches” with her teammates and has a teamfirst mindset.
“The way she carries herself in the gym and on the ice is just like, you want to be like her,” Kelly said. “She’s so intense, she works so hard. She’s someone that the team can look up to.”
Kelly added that Carey is super honest, but in a way that doesn’t hurt her teammates’ feelings. She connects with them on a personal level.
“She’s a great listener, and she really tries to get to know people for who they are as a person,” Kelly said.
This iteration of the BU women’s hockey team is much different from the last. The Terriers lost 10 seniors and graduate students and added 10 freshmen and transfers, but Carey has the group “dialed in” and ready to roll.
It’s been a whirlwind hockey journey for Carey. She didn’t even start skating until age 9. She lost the MIAA Division 1 state championship as a freshman at Austin Prep, then won it as a senior after a year at Cushing Academy in between.
From there, she spent two seasons at Stonehill before transferring to her dream school, where she helped capture BU’s first league title in a decade — all while rehabbing from her first major injury. Now, in her final year in college, she’ll captain the Terriers as they look to repeat as Hockey East champions.
George describes his daughter’s journey up to becoming captain as a “fairyland story.”
“She’s going to be the captain of the BU women’s hockey team. It doesn’t get any better than that,” George said. “It’s very, very special. I’m very proud of her. A lot of responsibility comes with that, and she’s aware of it, and she’s ready to take it on.”
BY HANNAH CONNORS
BHB Writer
In a season marked by shifting lines, the Boston University men’s and women’s hockey teams proved adaptability breeds success — culminating in dual NCAA tournament appearances.
The women’s team clinched an NCAA tournament berth with a historic Hockey East championship — its first in a decade. The men’s team earned an at-large bid and rode that momentum to the national championship game, where the Terriers ultimately fell to Western Michigan.
Their journeys to the tournament took distinct routes. The women surged early in the season, asserting dominance in Hockey East to build a compelling underdog narrative.
The men, meanwhile, maintained a high national ranking but struggled with consistency before hitting their stride in the latter half of the season.
Both teams, however, shared a common theme: Frequent line changes characterized their seasons. Coaches leaned into rotation, searching for chemistry, balance and fresh energy.
The result was a dynamic style of play, one that kept players adapting.
For the women’s team, the principle of line changes moved well beyond finding good fits and instead reflected how the team as a whole defined success.
“Just because you win doesn’t mean you should keep the lines together,” said Tara Watchorn, the head coach of the women’s team.
The Terriers opened last season with nine wins in their first 12
games, including an eight-game winning streak. While their record held steady, their lines were anything but — constantly shifting in search of the right chemistry.
Over those 12 games, the lineup was altered in nine instances, meaning that 75% of the time, players competed in different configurations regardless of the game’s outcome.
“It comes back to how you define success,” Watchorn said. “You’re showing them that it’s a tangible way. You’re showing them that it’s not just about winning a game.”
Heading into the 2025-26 season, the women’s team faces a transitional period after graduating 10 upperclassmen — seven of whom played major roles last year.
While returning contributors like Riley Walsh, Sydney Healey and Luisa and Lilli Welcke provide a strong foundation, the loss of most of the defensive core means the team may need time to recalibrate.
The season is unpredictable, Watchorn explained.
“I think they took pride in knowing that [line changes] didn’t stress us out down that stretch,” she added.
For example, in the Hockey East playoffs, Healey and Walsh switched between the first and third lines because their opponent “demanded a different field depending on the game,” Watchorn said.
If the team was not seasoned with rotations, they would not have been able to make that change late in the playoffs, Watchorn said.
With a roster in flux and new faces stepping into critical roles, the ability to pivot — whether through line changes or embracing unfamiliar pairings — will be essential. As the season unfolds, that same resilience and willingness to evolve could prove to be the
Terriers’ greatest asset.
On the men’s side, BU returns a young roster, with 20 underclassmen — 12 of whom are freshmen.
The team had a young and inexperienced roster last year, which may have contributed to their frequent penalties and struggles for consistency in the first half of the season.
These struggles came to a head when BU lost to Yale, 7-5, before the new year.
The most significant lineup adjustment came in the second semester with the introduction of then-freshman goaltender Mikhail Yegerov. While the new face between the pipes provided stability in net during the latter half of the season, line combinations fluctuated until the NCAA regional final against Cornell. Only in that game and the Frozen Four did the lines remain consistent.
Out of 42 games played, including exhibitions, only eight games featured unchanged combinations, meaning players were shuffled in roughly 80% of the matchups.
With such a young squad — specifically with a ton of new
forwards — Head Coach Jay Pandolfo said they will be “doing some experimenting” to find the correct chemistry of players.
Pandolfo, however, said that while over half the team is new, the players have “meshed very well” together.
“I like the way practices have looked from a competitive standpoint,” Pandolfo said. “It doesn’t seem like the younger guys are intimidated [and] that they are willing to compete. And I think that goes a long way when you see that right off the hop.”
Though a young roster may be a concern to outsiders, Pandolfo’s roster is built on versatility — twoway forwards, defenders who can jump into the rush and players who generate offense creatively. Each player can adapt — and has to — with the level of talent on the team.
This season brings fresh faces, new questions and plenty of uncertainty. But if last year offered any glimpse of the future, it’s that the Terriers are at their best when the pieces keep moving and when change itself becomes their constant.
Continued from page 1
2024-25 season, trailing only Michigan and Boston College.
That is why BU is a destination in college hockey. It’s the player development capital of NCAA men’s hockey on the East Coast.
But what exactly is player development?
When a player is drafted, they aren’t picked for what they are — they are selected for what they could become. Organizations are projecting what 18 year olds will blossom into years down the line.
After being selected, the next two-plus years are crucial in a player’s development, but there isn’t one set way to go about it, since it’s not an exact science.
Ask anyone in hockey, “What is development?” or “How do you categorize development?” They’ll either pause to think or struggle to muster an answer.
“It’s not an easy question to answer,” said Mike Grier, general manager of the San Jose Sharks. “There’s a lot of different ways for players to develop, and no player’s path or trajectory is the same.”
With the NCAA-CHL Agreement — which allowed Canadian major junior players to play collegiately — now fully in effect, every top player in a given birth year can consider playing college hockey, an option that didn’t exist a year ago.
Chris Kelleher, the assistant general manager of the Minnesota Wild, said the right college program is a place where a given player can succeed in more ways than just on the ice.
“The big programs and a lot of the college programs now, they have everything,” he said. ”If you’re driven and you want to succeed, they’ll give you every opportunity.”
That’s precisely why, since the landmark agreement on Nov. 7, 2024, a number of top prospects and draft-eligible players have made the move to the
NCAA.
Penn State brought in Gavin McKenna, the projected top pick in the 2026 class, and the 2025 14th overall pick, Jackson Smith. Michigan State added 2024 fourth overall pick Cayden Lindstrom and 2025 sixth overall pick Porter Martone. Hockey East rival Providence added 2025 No. 10 overall pick Roger McQueen. While BU didn’t add a CHL player of the caliber of those previously listed, it added Ryder Ritchie, a second-round selection of the Wild, in 2024.
“We feel it’s a great spot for him,” Kelleher said of Ritchie choosing to play for the Terriers. The college hockey schedule is very different from that of the CHL.
The OHL and WHL have 68-game regular season games, while the QMJHL has 64, which was moved down from 68 to “optimize our players’ development both on and off the ice,” said Commissioner Mario Cecchini. The vast majority of NCAA programs don’t play more than 40 games, both regular and postseason. Pandolfo said he feels the NHL values the college hockey
“There’s a lot of practice time, a lot of time to develop off the ice in the weight room, and that’s a lot of what these kids need at that age,” he said.
With Ritchie specifically, Pandolfo said he’s going to benefit from playing fewer games and not taking long bus rides to travel to away games.
“You just don’t have as much time to train off the ice [in the CHL], so I think that’s really going to benefit him,” he added. “He’s a really good-sized kid, but he’s still going to develop off the ice as well, and with the skill set he has on the ice, I think it’s really going to help him. I think you’re going to see him get a lot better over the course of the season.”
Pandolfo, who played at BU from 1992 to 1996 and has now coached at his alma mater since 2022, knows better than anyone how valuable the University can be for a young player.
“This place creates a great environment for players to develop, to win and to learn how to be a pro,” he said. “That goes a long way, and I think that’s why NHL teams value
COURTESY OF MATT WOOLVERTON/BU ATHLETICS
Defenseman junior Aiden Celebrini, sophomore defenseman Sascha Boumedienne and sophomore forward Sacha Boisvert practicing in the leadup to the 2025-26 season.
COURTESY OF RICH GAGNON
BU men’s hockey Head Coach Jay Pandolfo during practice at the Frozen Four in St. Louis last season. During his tenure at BU, Pandolfo has led the Terriers to the Frozen Four every season, in large part because of the program’s ability to develop talent.
Grier and Kelleher both played with Pandolfo at BU. With decades of experience in and around NHL front offices, the two know everyone else around the league feels the same as they do.
“Bill Guerin’s a BC guy, but he thinks the world of Jay Pandolfo and BU,” Kelleher said of the Wild’s general manager. “Any team would be
happy to see their guys go there and develop and have a great college experience. It’s a widely respected program amongst NHL personnel.”
For Grier, it all starts with Pandolfo and the rest of the staff: Associate Head Coach Joe Pereira and Assistant Coach Kim Brandvold.
It’s rare in college hockey that anyone on a coaching staff has experience coaching at the NHL level, but the Terriers have two in Pandolfo and Brandvold.
Pandolfo spent a season with the New Jersey Devils as a scout and then seven seasons with the Boston Bruins, working his way up to assistant coach. Brandvold also spent seven seasons with the Bruins as a skating consultant and a skating and skills development coach.
Grier said because of their NHL experience, Pandolfo and Brandvold “know what NHL habits look like,” which they then pass on to BU players.
“[They] teach these kids and help guide these kids to what it actually takes to not only play in the NHL, but to be successful in the NHL,” Grier said. “It’s a big plus because it’s one thing to play a handful of games in the NHL, but you want to get to the NHL and make a career out of it.”
Continued from page 1
“She [sees] so many things in a practice or a game that would never cross my mind,” said Shaunessy, former assistant captain for the title-winning 2024-25 team. “These tiny little nuances that I’m not thinking about, and I would never think about.”
So, no, she is not exactly an American college football coach with a mustache coaching a sport he never played. And yet, once you see one way in which Watchorn is similar to Lasso, you never stop finding more.
In press conferences, she loves buzzwords and constantly whips out cheesy, made-for-TV oneliners. She is a staunch optimist, who grins — and not sarcastically — at setbacks like an 8-1 loss or a broken-down bus that traps her team in Vermont in January.
And she is, for lack of a better term, a total goofball. She’s named BU’s power and face-off plays after pets and she speaks in a cat voice. She once insisted her assistant coaches join her in donning penguin onesies for the Terriers’ annual 3-on-3 Halloween tournament, where she proceeded to belly-slide across the Walter Brown Area neutral zone like an actual penguin.
“Tara said her biggest dream was to slide on her belly like a penguin,” senior defender Maeve Kelly recalled. And finally, there’s Watchorn’s infectious, unwavering, impossibly resilient energy.
“She loves BU. She thinks
OF MATT WOOLVERTON/BU ATHLETICS
about BU constantly,” Reagan Rust, a former assistant coach, said. “Like, 24/7.”
When she returned in 2023, she took over a team that hadn’t had a winning season since before the pandemic and immediately began reminding players of all the things at BU they should be grateful for.
Sometimes, this positivity drives her players nuts.
On the day the Terriers officially returned from
Christmas break this past January, she scheduled the dreaded beep test — where players test their running endurance — for 8 a.m.
“She’s so loud coming in, clapping her hands,” Shaunessy remembered. “She’s like, ‘There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, ladies! There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.’”
The players, of course, could think of a lot of places, but Watchorn didn’t stop the bit.
“And all of us are giving her this look,’” Shaunessy said. “And she just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going.”
Nine months later, Shaunessy told me Watchorn’s energy was what got her through the workout.
All of this is goofy. It is not, however, trivial. In fact, it’s the very first thing Watchorn wanted to change when she took over.
“[She was] just changing the mentality to be positive,”
Shaunessy said. “In whatever we did.”
Shaunessy, too, sees the Lasso comparison. She and Assistant Coach Megan Meyers would laugh about it all the time.
Then there’s Watchorn herself. She’s actually the most lukewarm on the comparison, rejecting the idea of an “overarching” similarity between herself and the TV character.
Fair enough.
She admitted she struggles to get into new shows, but she’s seen every season of Ted Lasso multiple times.
At the very least, Watchorn’s priorities and Lasso’s priorities are aligned.
“I’m a hockey nerd, obviously, or I wouldn’t be in this role,” Watchorn said, sitting on a sofa in her office beneath Walter Brown. “But [my] passion is really around leadership and group dynamics and belonging and creating an environment for our team.”
And it is precisely there in which Watchorn engineered BU’s remarkable turnaround. After all, Watchorn won Hockey East with the very same core of players she inherited. This is not a recruiting story — it’s a culture-building story, just like AFC Richmond.
“It wasn’t like we took it from Ted Lasso,” Watchorn said. “But there’s a lot of things that I’m like, ‘Wow, there are a lot of similarities.’”
And yes, there is a “BELIEVE” sign above the front door to her office.
Read the rest of this story at hockey.dailyfreepress.com
BY SAM ROBB O’HAGAN
BHB Co-Director
As the Boston University men’s hockey team enters the fourth year of the Jay Pandolfo era, the Terriers have a nation-leading 19 NHL draft picks on their roster. Ten of them were taken in the first or second round, also an NCAA high, making Pandolfo’s group of the highest pedigree in the country.
The trade off? The Terriers have 20 underclassmen on a roster of 26. They do have one senior, but he wasn’t even with the team last year.
Pandolfo has been building his team this way since he arrived. Last season, BU had 14 draft picks and was the third-youngest team in the country. The year before that, it had 12 picks and was fourth-youngest.
It is easy to look at the staggering imbalance on BU’s roster and conclude that Pandolfo, alongside Associate Head Coach Joe Pereira, who leads recruiting, are choosing one end on the roster building spectrum — young, highly-drafted but inexperienced teams on one side as opposed to older, less-talented but more experienced teams on the other.
This is the narrative that took hold when BU met Western Michigan, which only had seven draft picks, none of them first- or second-rounders, in April’s national championship game.
The matchup was billed as a clash between the two opposite sides of the spectrum. When WMU won 6-2 to send the Terriers home from the Frozen Four, an argument about BU and programs like it exploded — this style of roster construction can’t get it done.
“Across the scouting landscape, that is the belief,” an NHL scout, who
was granted anonymity in exchange for his candor, told me. “That the older, ‘less skilled’ teams tend to go further towards the national championship than the skilled teams.”
The numbers and results appear to support it. There have been five national champions crowned in men’s college hockey since COVID cancelled the 2020 tournament.
Over that same span, 99 first or second-round picks have played in the NCAA, and only seven have won the whole thing. All did it with the University of Denver in either 2022 or 2024, and only one, Zeev Buium, was a first-round pick.
That means UMass, Quinnipiac and Western, three programs that won their first titles in the five seasons since the pandemic, did so without a first- or second-rounder on the roster.
So what’s happening here? Is there something about young, highlydrafted players that doesn’t work on college hockey’s biggest stage?
Does Western know something BU doesn’t? Is there a style of play that young, talented teams can’t produce but older, more experienced teams can?
I spoke to Tom Upton, an assistant coach at UMass, for his insights on Western and BU.
Upton game-planned against both teams last postseason, though this ended in an overtime loss to the Terriers in the Hockey East quarterfinal and a NCAA regional final loss to the Broncos. How were their styles different?
“I thought they were actually very similar,” Upton said. Really?
“The people that think they’re completely different,” he told me, “are the people that look at the fluff, they look at the draft picks.”
Western Michigan celebrates winning the program’s first national championship in a 6-2 win over BU in St. Louis. The Terriers’ loss sparked a debate over whether BU’s young, highly-drafted rosters can win a national title.
What does it mean to be a draft pick? In college hockey, the instinct is to think it means quite a lot.
In college basketball, football and baseball, projected draft status is one of the few standardized measures of talent, whereas no projection is needed in college hockey.
There is a round, pick or NHL logo — or not — next to every player’s name on every line chart. Accordingly, rosters and recruiting classes are judged by where and if guys were drafted, and first- and second-round picks become the
presumed superstars in the sport.
This is at least partly why the perception of BU and Western heading into the national title game became what it was.
The Terriers were led by Cole Eiserman, the 20th pick in 2024, and Cole Hutson, the 43rd pick, backstopped by Mikhail Yegorov, the 49th pick and co-captained by Ryan Greene, 2022’s 57th pick.
The Broncos’ star was a fifthround pick named Alex Bump, who no one outside of Kalamazoo and Philadelphia would’ve been all
that familiar with. Their next three leading-scorers all went undrafted. If draft status was your only measuring stick, you’d reach the conclusion that Western was suffering from an enormous talent deficit.
Yet the Broncos won.
“When you look at where they’re drafted, all that says is, up until [the day of said draft], you have looked good enough that I can project you to be an NHL-er in the future,” WMU Coach Pat Ferschweiler said. Read the rest of this story at hockey.dailyfreepress.com.
BY MARCUS ANTONELLI BHB Writer
Ryder Ritchie didn’t know if he’d ever get to play at Boston University.
At the time the Minnesota Wild called his name No. 45 overall in the 2024 NHL Draft, Ritchie was a member of the Prince Albert Raiders of the WHL.
Due to the NCAA’s amateurism rules, Canadian players used to be
ineligible to play collegiate hockey.
Participation in Canadian leagues labeled players as “professionals,” and some players had already signed their NHL entry-level contracts.
“Being a Canadian, we’re kind of blind to college hockey,” Ritchie said. “When I was 15, I was thinking of going to college, and I got to visit a few schools.”
The idea of playing in college lingered.
Even though the Terriers reached out within an hour of his eligibility opening, Ritchie wasn’t able to visit. Boston is a long way from his native town, Kelowna. He eventually signed into the WHL at 16, shutting the door on college hockey.
That all changed Nov. 7, 2024, when the NCAA opened the gates for Canadian major junior players to commit to college programs.
A few months later, Ritchie made his commitment to BU official.
But this is not BU’s first time bringing in elite talent from Western Canada.
Forty-four picks before Ritchie, his close friend, Macklin Celebrini, was picked first overall by the San Jose Sharks. Leading up to the 2024 draft, Celebrini dominated with the Terriers, winning the Hobey Baker Award at age 17.
At the time, the only way Celebrini could get into college hockey was through the traditional route to the NCAA: play high school prep and then proceed to the USHL.
Fast forward to this past summer — Celebrini was finishing his rookie NHL season as a Calder Trophy finalist when he visited the Ritchie household for a week.
At the time, Ritchie was in the midst of the big decision on where to continue his hockey career. The choice could’ve been an easy one: The Big Ten and the National Collegiate Hockey Conference have top-tier programs that are close to his hometown.
Still, BU remained in the cards all the way through the process for many reasons — coaching, team history and environment — but a family friend’s blessing put a ring on the paw.
“I asked Mack [Celebrini] straight up, ‘If you had to make the decision again, would you go to BU or would you change?’” Ritchie’s father, Byron, said. “He said there’s no other place he’d go than BU.”
While a few YouTube videos on the Beanpot and hockey program gave Ritchie a glimpse of what life could look like at BU, a perspective from one of his “best buddies” on
everything BU had to offer made the decision for Ritchie a lot easier.
“Getting to talk to him about it and his experience here, how much he loved it, it was a green flag for me,” Ritchie said.
Throughout the 2024-25 season, Ritchie was deep in a competitive year with the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers, but that doesn’t mean his amateur and professional future was out of his mind — he has his father to thank for that.
“I’ve loved hockey ever since I was born. I was born into a hockey family,” Ritchie said. “Since a young age, I got to experience what it’s like to be around hockey.”
With 20-plus years of experience from his NHL days to multiple stops in Europe, Byron Ritchie has loads of hockey knowledge. But he knows the WHL best, starting his professional hockey career with the Lethbridge Hurricanes.
When the opportunity for his son to play in college opened — so did the conversations about what was best.
“It toughens you up. It hardens you. It exhausts you. You have to learn how to play tired,” Byron said. “There’s no off nights. But on the other hand, is that best for your development long-term?”
In the WHL, travel is by bus and the pizza is plentiful. But for an NHL second-round pick, there’s more out there to help grow your game. At 19, Ritchie could’ve been playing more frequently and against younger competition if he stayed in the WHL.
The Terriers called the Ritchie household again after his eligibility opened. This time around, nothing prevented Ritchie from shipping up to Boston.
The more the Ritchies learned of what the Terriers had to offer, the stars began to align.
The NCAA environment grants Ritchie a chance to fine-tune his game.
“He’s still more skilled than a lot of the college players and smarter, but they’re heavy and fast and they play hard,” Byron Ritchie said. “So now his compete level away from
the puck, his puck battles, his details defensively, things like that, he’s going to improve there.”
With the influx of Canadians into college hockey, a focus many pundits will have for Ritchie — and other Canadian players — is how they’ll adapt to the play style. One thing’s certain — all parties have an idea of what Ritchie can do on the ice.
Ritchie also knows what separates him from his friends heading south of the border is the program he’s joined.
“There’s a lot of things,” Ritchie said of what made BU stand out. “Unbelievable coaching staff, sick rink and you’re going to a good team that wants to win, that’s the best part of hockey. I want to win a national championship, and I thought this would be a great spot to do it.”
It’s a symbiotic relationship for Ritchie and the coaching staff.
“He’s going to be a tremendous asset for us from day one,” said Associate Head Coach Joe Pereira. “We don’t have too many right-shot wingers this year, so we’re going to need him to play well for us.”
Head Coach Jay Pandolfo said he thinks Ritchie will “get a lot better over the course of the season.”
“It was great that he chose to come here,” Pandolfo said. “His hockey sense is really high, and we value that a lot here. To go along with his competitiveness, he can play with anyone. He can make plays.”
He’s well-decorated as a result, claiming a WHL Rookie of the Year, a two-time junior Gold Medalist (Hlinka-Gretzky, U18’s) and a WHL Champion in Medicine Hat.
BU was on Ritchie’s radar before wearing the Scarlet and White was ever a likelihood in his lifetime, and one rule change made it possible to change the direction of his hockey career.
Now he has the chance to add more to his already stocked trophy case — maybe even a sixth national championship for the Terriers.
“That’s the goal,” he said. “I got to win a WHL championship last year, and that was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, so I want to win another one.”
BY ELI CLOUTIER
BHB Co-Director
The day starts early for Luisa and Lilli Welcke in their hometown of Heidelberg, Germany. The pair, known to most as “the Welckes” or the “Welcke twins,” are adventurous — and so is Riley Walsh. Together, these three Boston University women’s hockey players would rather “do it” than talk about it.
Still, when Walsh joined the Welcke twins for a 10-day trip to Germany in the summer of 2024, she had no idea what she was in for.
Walsh had never been to Germany but was thrilled to go. Each morning at the ripe hour of 8 a.m., the Welckes would wake Walsh up to go on a hike or a long bike ride.
Her favorite experience of the trip was a hike — but not just any old trail hike.
“It’s like 3,000 stairs, straight up,” Walsh said.
Walsh was referring to the Himmelsleiter, which translates to “ladder to heaven” — the tallest peak in the Odenwald forest. The Himmelsleiter is steep, ascending from the Heidelberg Castle to the summit of Königstuhl with an elevation over 1,800 feet.
“It was great,” Walsh said. “And then I made a joke. I was like, ‘For our exercise tomorrow, let’s do the stairs again.’ … So then the next morning, I get woken up at 8 a.m. to go climb the stairs again.”
Lilli Welcke said the Himmelsleiter is not really a tourist attraction, but rather a historic site locals take advantage of.
Walsh’s hometown, Duxbury, Massachusetts, is more than
3,600 miles closer to BU. The Welcke twins made the short trip to Duxbury before showing Walsh their hometown.
As any local to Boston might, Walsh took the twins digging for clams.
“My dad has his clamming license,” she said. “He took us out in the mud flats, and we were just digging in mud for clams.”
While both activities were enjoyable, Luisa Welcke said climbing the Himmelsleiter stairs was a highlight of her trips home.
Just six weeks before their trip to Germany, Luisa and Lilli Welcke met Walsh for the first time. After Walsh transferred from Union College in Schenectady, New York, the three were roomed together for the summer session.
“They were really fast friends when Riley first got on campus,”
Head Coach Tara Watchorn said.
Connecting with new teammates was important for the Welckes to do, as they were once transfer students. Ahead of the 2023-24 season, the Welcke twins transferred from the University of Maine and dealt with “the same experience” as Walsh, Luisa said.
åThe three have the same interests and a love for Boston. Whether it’s exploring places they’ve never been to or cooking in their dorm kitchen, the trio is expected to be spotted together.
Walsh and the Welckes love scootering to the North End and rollerblading to Newbury Street and Cambridge. But above all, they share an intense love of coffee. Luisa and Lilli Welcke even have their own “coffee shop” in their apartment named “The Welcke Kitchen.”
When Lakon Paris Patisserie opened a location in Boston’s Seaport District in September 2024, they had to try it — and waited in line for an hour.
“It was freezing cold,” Luisa Welcke recalled. But Walsh described it differently — as “a nice fall Sunday.”
The “triplets,” or the “three W’s” as some quickly started calling them, walked back to BU from the Seaport District. The walk stretched into the morning, with a stop or two taken at the Boston Common, Walsh said.
But along the way, the three ran into Charlie McAvoy, the Boston Bruins’ defenseman and alternate captain, Lilli Welcke said.
That wasn’t the only time they ran into a Bruin.
While at the Nuts Factory on Newbury Street — where Walsh and the Welckes bonded the most over during their first summer together — they crossed paths with David Pastrňák. The Bruins’ right winger and alternate captain was a favorite of Walsh’s.
“We walked out after stuffing our faces,” Walsh said. The three tried to sample more than 100 nut varieties at the Nuts Factory.
“Lilli goes, ‘Oh my god, that was [David] Pastrňák,’” Walsh continued. “I’m shaking. I turn around, and I have my bag nuts in my hand. I turn around so fast. I’m like, ‘Pastrňák!’ We got a photo with him..”
The deep connection the “triplets” have with one another extends to the ice.
Their on-ice chemistry dates back to Walsh’s first appearance in the scarlet and white, an exhibition against Concordia University on Sep. 20, 2024. Lilli Welcke centered Luisa Welcke on the left
wing with Walsh on the right. While all three of them weren’t consistently on the same line all season, Watchorn said when the Terriers needed a spark of offense, she knew who to turn to.
Assistant Coach Megan Myers said Walsh complements the Welckes on the ice. Luisa and Lilli Welcke are fast, dynamic creators of offense, while Walsh brings the grit and does the dirty work, she said.
“The Welckes are great at possession. They wear teams down offensively. They get teams tired by just how good their puck movement is,” Myers said. “Then, as soon as the Welckes shoot the puck, maybe it gets saved or goes to the corner, Riley’s on it, on the hunt. They really just wear teams down.”
Having played together their entire lives, Luisa and Lilli Welcke can see things on the ice that no one else can, making the pair a handful for opponents. A threat for opponents is that the twins — and now Walsh — know each other’s next move. Walsh is a great communicator, Myers said, which is a big reason why they coordinate so well on the ice.
“We all work towards the same thing. We all see the same visions,” Walsh said. “We all write up the same plays in our minds and speak about it before we go out for our next shift.”
When asking anyone on the team about the “three W’s,” they’ll mention just how special their connection is.
“Their dynamic is unreal,” said sophomore defender Keira Healey. “I’ve never seen three people click so well together, and they’re dynamic on and off the ice.”
BY HENRY DINH-PRICE
BHB Writer
For anyone familiar with Sacha Boisvert, his hockey career has been anything but a surprise.
The Trois-Rivières, Quebec, native first donned skates when he was two and a half years old. His father noticed his agility almost instantly. By the time he was 3, he was skating with kids more than twice his age.
“I said to my wife, we’re going to invest time and money in the early age to give him a chance to do something,” his father, Jimmy Boisvert, said.
As Boston University sophomore forward Sacha Boisvert continues making noticeable leaps each season, this certainty in his game still rings true.
Boisvert spent the final two years of his junior career with the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks. In his first season, he put up 45 points (17 goals, 28 assists) in 57 games. A year later, Boisvert became more than a point-pergame player, tallying 68 points (36 goals, 32 assists) in 61 games, assisting the Lumberjacks to an Eastern Conference Finals appearance.
“Everybody knew right when we started working with him, and right when I started working with him,” Parker Burgess, Boisvert’s head coach at Muskegon, said of the forward’s abilities. “You obviously saw the talent and strength and just the raw power in his game.”
Those two seasons led to Boisvert being selected 18th overall in the 2024 NHL Draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, two spots ahead of his new teammate, forward Cole Eiserman.
“Getting to be in Vegas for the draft and see him get drafted in the first round… was one of the best experiences I’ve had as a coach,” Burgess said.
Boisvert lit up the scoresheet in
his lone season at North Dakota, leading the Fighting Hawks in goals (18) and points (32) en route to earning the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Rookie of the Year award.
Burgess said he was “not surprised at all” to see Boisvert perform well enough for the accolade.
“I would’ve been surprised if he wasn’t,” he added.
Boisvert left his hometown in Quebec when he was 14 — a decision made when he was 12.
The destination? Mount Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.
Mount Saint Charles, which has become a talent factory — producing 34 NHL draft picks and numerous other collegiate players — was Boisvert’s home for two seasons. The reason for the move, as Jimmy Boisvert put it, is that “hockey is more physical in Boston than Quebec.”
“I said to my wife, ‘Listen, he needs to be there because in Quebec, he has the skills and he has the speed, so he needs to put on a little bit of grit,” Jimmy said.
“When he arrived at Mount Saint Charles, his play changed.”
It was also at Mount Saint Charles, 50 miles southwest of Agganis Arena, that Boisvert developed an affinity for Boston University hockey. On free weekends, he joined some of his teammates in attending Terriers games.
But ultimately, Boisvert chose North Dakota over BU coming out of the USHL.
“It was a very big decision for him to go to NoDak and choose against BU,” Jimmy said.
Boisvert had been heavily recruited for years by former North Dakota head coach Brad Berry and ultimately went in that direction.
“If we were the staff three years ago [and] had a little bit more time, I think he had some ties [to BU],”
CHEN | LAYOUT CO-EDITOR
Sophomore forward Sacha Boisvert shoots a puck against freshman defenseman Charlie
annual Scarlet and White scrimmage. Bosivert, a first-round pick of the Chicago
a transfer from the University of North Dakota.
said BU Associate Head Coach Joe Pereira.
But despite Boisvert’s productive season a year ago, the Fighting Hawks missed the NCAA tournament, and Berry was fired at the end of the year.
That decision opened Boisvert’s mind to transferring.
“After the last game, I was excited going back with the guys,” Boisvert said. “And then the coaching change made me rethink the whole process.”
And once Boisvert settled on transferring, there was only one possible destination.
“I really had one school in my mind, and it was coming to Boston University,” Boisvert said.
Read the rest of this story at hockey.dailyfreepress.com.
BY SAM ROBB O’HAGAN BHB Co-Director
Around an hour before every game, Cole Eiserman finds a spot on the bench, puts his over-ear headphones on and stares at the empty rink in front of him. He may have the most powerful shot in the country, but mindfulness is a big deal for college hockey’s most feared goal-scorer.
As he sits on the bench, Eiserman imagines the rink as a kind of bubble. In between three sips of water, three of Pedialyte
and three of coffee — in that order — he traces his mind around the boards.
“The game is in the glass,” Eiserman said. “I like to trace my mind around the rink and just try to start trying to stay in that bubble … Nothing else matters. The only thing that matters is that game.”
This is how 19-year-old Eiserman centers his focus before playing one of the most chaotic sports on earth.
Ultimately, the goal for the sophomore forward, who the New York Islanders took as their 20th pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, is to grab as much control over a game that — by its nature — is so very uncontrollable.
It’s what drew a young Eiserman to goal-scoring in the first place. In his 8-year-old mind, the best way to dictate the outcome of a hockey game was to score the goals, Eiserman said.
He has since become better at that than arguably any other drafted prospect, after leading all NCAA freshmen in goals last season at Boston University. He is not the one-tool player he’s sometimes made out to be, but everyone — himself included — knows Eiserman’s value to BU, to the Islanders and to any team he plays on is putting pucks in the back of the net.
And because he is not the most
creative player, he only gets so many chances to do it. This means that in a sport defined by unpredictability, Eiserman’s game is about certainty.
“You only get so many opportunities in a game … You’re only getting, if you’re having a good game, maybe three to five Grade A chances,” Eiserman said. “Once you do get that Grade A, in the back of my head, it has to go in.”
So much of the public’s attention is given to Eiserman’s physical gifts and the sheer, Ovechkin-like power he generates on his shot. He’s famous for his one-timer, which comes off his stick so fast it’s been dubbed a “no-timer.”
But as the Newburyport, Massachusetts native sits in BU’s quiet film room, he points out that less than a fourth of his goals last season were of this sort. He’s almost right, as only seven of his 25 tallies were one-timers.
“He can shoot the puck in so many different ways,” said Notre Dame goalie Nick Kempf, who was Eiserman’s teammate for two seasons in the U.S. National Team Development Program. “It’s harder like that. It’s harder to expect what’s coming from him.”
His gift is reading and reacting: to get and then score a Grade A, he must absorb a bevy of information
— the location of defenders and teammates, the stance of a goalie, the angle of a goalie’s stick, to name a few — in a split second, while he and everyone around him move at high speeds. He can’t exactly afford to be distracted.
Hence why Eiserman’s gameday routine, which he religiously adheres to, includes trapping his mind inside the rink. But it also involves working out his eyes.
“People forget you can stretch your eyes,” he said. “Your eyes are doing so much during the day. They need to be stretched, too.”
ANNIKA MORRIS | BHB PHOTOGRAPHER
Cole Eiserman skates through the neutral zone in a game at the University of North Dakota during the 2024-25 season. The sophomore forward led all NCAA freshmen in goals (25) in 2024-25.
Part of his mindfulness on the bench before games includes chucking the stack of warm-up pucks, one by one, onto the ice. He then counts the scatter up, training his eyes to be aware of every object on the ice.
“I like to see the pucks and just be locked in because when you’re really seeing it, you’re really focused,” Eiserman said, as his hands made a halo shape around his shut eyes. “Sometimes it’s just foggy, and I’m trying to get that fogginess out of there.”
Read the rest of this story at hockey.dailyfreepress.com.
BY HANNAH CONNORS BHB Writer
Characterized by explosive bursts of sprint-like skating, intense physical contact and sustained endurance, college hockey demands peak performance through 60-minute games played multiple times a week over a long season.
Balancing the workload of a college student at a top-50 school like Boston University, while maintaining consistent health is anything but easy for hockey players.
Greg Cox, an injury prevention specialist at the Micheli Center for Sports Injury Prevention at Boston Children’s Hospital, wrote in a statement to the Boston Hockey Blog that college-level ice hockey contains the “longest season in college sports.”
“Planning and preparing to be competitive at the end of the season requires managing player demands throughout its full duration,” he wrote.
Long before the puck drops and the season begins, BU’s performance staff is deeply invested in the game, mapping out injury prevention strategies and recovery routines that treat student-athletes — not just as competitors, but as people.
The Terriers’ performance staff credits their success to three core principles: collaboration, consistency and communication.
The staff is a multidisciplinary team — including athletic training, strength and conditioning and nutrition — that operates in sync under shared principles. This unified approach is key to the Terriers’ continued success in athletes’ wellness and recovery.
Hockey players expend a high amount of energy, relying primarily on carbohydrates as their main fuel source, according
to a study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports.
To meet these energy demands, athletes must be intentional about their fueling strategies, especially in a sport as physically demanding and fast-paced as hockey. Proper nutrition not only supports performance but also plays a critical role in recovery, injury prevention and long-term endurance throughout the season.
Sarah Gilbert, a registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition for BU Athletics, said it is important for players to create habits before the season starts to establish consistency in nutrition.
“Pre- and post-season is when we do the most nutrition education,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert explained while her primary focus is on teamwide nutrition strategies, other members of the performance staff, who interact with the athletes daily, are well-positioned to identify individual needs.
Bridget Salvador, BU’s men’s ice hockey athletic trainer, Emily Gibb, the women’s team athletic trainer, and Ken Whittier, the strength and conditioning coach, conducts population screenings at the start of the season. Their daily presence allows them to closely monitor athletes’ health and provide ongoing support throughout the year.
“It’s a year-round process,” Salvador said.
That year-round commitment extends beyond practices and games. It includes managing athletes’ needs during travel, ensuring continuity in care no matter where the team is competing.
Gibb described the importance of maintaining routine when the players are traveling.
“[We try] to make it so that the travel itself is not a big deal. Then
that way people can kind of focus on the game,” she said.
Preserving that sense of normalcy — even away from home — helps athletes stick to their established habits and stay physically prepared.
“Consistency with your own routine and making sure that you’re true to the things that you know are going to put you in a good spot to be successful is paramount,” Gibb said.
Whittier echoed that sentiment, emphasizing that consistency is key to long-term health and performance.
“I don’t think there’s a magic bullet other than consistent habits,” Whittier said.
The consistency staff members praise is rooted in the communication and collaboration they share. When a player is injured, it’s a teamwide effort to ensure a safe and effective return to the ice.
“Both of our coaching staff are open to the ways that they can be helpful in the transition back to participation,” Gibb said.
Whittier specifically mentioned he has been “incredibly impressed” with men’s hockey Head Coach Jay Pandolfo and women’s hockey Head Coach Tara Watchhorn.
“They’re both students of the game, and they will take feedback from anybody,” he said.
Coaches work closely with athletic trainers to tailor each athlete’s recovery plan. That might mean having a player observe part of practice before heading to rehab or modifying drills to meet their needs as they begin to get cleared. This collaborative approach helps athletes return safely while maintaining their connection to the team.
“We don’t want them to feel isolated,” Salvador said. “We want them to continue to be a part of their team.”
Support for the wellness aspect of BU’s hockey programs
extends beyond the daily performance staff, encompassing administration and a network of local health care specialists.
“University athletics at the administrative level and throughout the department has made a commitment to both the men’s and women’s ice hockey program in terms of resources, staffing and investment that is unparalleled,” Gibb said. “We wouldn’t be able to provide a lot of the things that we provide to student-athletes without that support.”
In addition, Boston is one of the top-ranked cities for health care in the United States, according to Healthcare Insider, giving BU a geographic advantage in accessing care the university cannot provide directly.
Salvador said she believes this is one aspect of BU’s approach to wellness and recovery that sets them apart. Having this vast network teaches the athletes principles they can carry on past their time at BU, she said.
“They need to be able to advocate for themselves in all aspects of their lives,” Salvador said. “Empowering them to do that within the medical system is a great way for us to start some of those conversations that they can take into their jobs later or into future sports.”
Supporting individuals in advocating for themselves medically helps establish sustainable practices for their future.
“It’s just about the habits that you’re instilling in the players,” Whittier said. “All those components of just trying to build discipline, work ethic and humility.”
At BU, recovery isn’t just about returning to play — it’s about building resilient athletes prepared for life beyond the game.
BY HANNAH CONNORS
BHB Writer
Five minutes into overtime, the Boston University women’s ice hockey team had just one thing standing between them and their first Hockey East title in nearly a decade: a goal.
Then-junior forward Lilli Welcke found Sydney Healey positioned in front of the slot and delivered a perfectly timed pass, setting up the game-winning goal. As the puck hit the back of the net, Healey skated behind it in celebration, arms open and ready to embrace her teammates.
The first person she found was her younger sister and teammate, sophomore defender Keira Healey.
“She was the first one getting off that jumped at me,” the now-senior forward said with a laugh. “The video is actually hilarious because I didn’t know it was her at first.”
The sisters from Ontario, Canada, have different personalities, different social lives and play different positions, but they’re able to bring out the best in each other, both on and off the ice.
The two first remember playing together on a novice hockey team in their hometown. Despite a twoyear age gap, Keira played up to join Sydney.
Sisters in the same sport are often compared to one another, but the Healeys set themselves apart from an early age.
“I actually played defense, funny enough, for one season, and she was a forward,” Sydney Healey said.“Then, we kind of just flipped.”
They drove to practices and games together when they were both in juniors and found creative ways to train side by side, despite their positional differences.
“[We would] work on drills
together that both have defensive and offensive concepts,” Keira Healey said. “She would help rim a puck, and I’d shoot at the net for tips.”
That collaborative spirit made its way to college, where Sydney Healey began carving out her own path — one that would eventually lead Keira Healey to join her.
Heading into her final season, Sydney has played 106 games for the Terriers. As a freshman, she appeared in all 34 games, recording 12 points with five goals and seven assists, along with 18 blocked shots. She followed that up in her sophomore year, playing in another 34 games and improving her totals to 14 points with seven goals and seven assists.
When it was Keira Healey’s turn to choose a college, Sydney Healey tried not to sway her sister’s decision.
“I told her, ‘I would love for you to come here, but in the end,
it’s up to you,’” Sydney Healey said.
Sibling duos are a familiar theme across both sides of BU’s hockey programs, with notable pairs like the Celebrinis, Welckes and Hutsons.
“Obviously, every sibling wants their sibling to play hockey with them for the rest of their lives and play sports with them for the rest of their lives,” Sydney said. “I wanted that, but I never wanted to influence her decision based off of that.”
Ultimately, Keira Healey followed in Sydney Healey’s footsteps, joining her at BU.
College hockey is a big jump for anyone, let alone when they’re shouldering the expectations of a well-known name in Hockey East, but both sisters agree that the comparisons made between them haven’t affected their mindset or approach to the game.
The two are different players
and people, but “that’s how they complement each other,” Head Coach Tara Watchorn said.
Entering her freshman season last year, Keira Healey was quiet and reserved off the ice, but having her sister there helped her come out of her shell, according to her former teammate Julia Shaunessy.
Having someone who knows the ins and outs of the program is a luxury not many freshmen have, but Keira Healey had that advantage, allowing her to find her own sense of confidence early on.
“Because Syd was there, it really got her out of her shell, and she was able to show her personality on and off the ice,” Shaunessy said.
While Sydney Healey already established herself as a standout player before Keira Healey’s arrival at BU, her sister’s presence and support seem to have contributed to her continued success.
Last season, Sydney Healey played a pivotal role in the Terriers’ underdog success story, tallying 23 points from 15 goals and eight assists. Her standout performance earned her multiple honors for the 2024-25 season: She was named the Hockey East Tournament MVP after scoring the overtime gamewinning goal against Northeastern University in the championship, selected to the Hockey East AllTournament Team and recognized as a Hockey East Third Team AllStar.
“Her being here and stuff, it’s just felt like more of a home to me,” Sydney Healey said of her sister joining her at BU. “I love having her around, so it’s been so much more comfortable with her here.”
It’s apparent the sisters’ values resonate throughout the team. Their passion for hockey is
palpable.
Former assistant coach Reagan Rust described the Healey sisters as “the backbone of the team.”
“Every single time they go out there, they are going to give 110%, and they’re never going to lose a battle,” Rust said. “I can probably count on my hands the amount of times they lost battles on the ice last year.”
Heading into the 2025-26 season, the Healeys face a new kind of pressure: defending their Hockey East title.
Sydney Healey will take on added responsibility as she steps into a leadership role, now wearing an “A” on her jersey.
Keira Healey, entering her second year as a Terrier, appears to be embracing a similar mindset, ready to build on her freshman success with more growth and confidence from the year before.
“Even how she’s come back to start her sophomore year, just the way she is carrying herself, [she has] so much confidence,” Watchorn said.
As the Terriers look ahead to another season, the Healey sisters remain central to the team’s identity — not just for their skill, but for the balance they bring to the ice and to each other.
“They do almost yin and yang. They kind of balance each other out,” senior defenseman Maeve Kelly said.
With their final season on the ice together approaching, the sisters’ bond will only grow.
“You don’t really get to experience winning the Hockey East Championship, and the first person you hug [is] your sister,” Sydney Healey said.
There’s no doubt the pair will be eager to chase the title once more, hoping to experience that feeling one more time.
Is this finally the year for BU men’s hockey?
Here’s what the BHB’s writers think
Do you ever wonder how the Blog predicts the season to go? Have you ever wanted to hold us accountable for our predictions? Well, here’s your chance. Bookmark this story and come back in April, or periodically come back and check to see how our takes are faring.
After BU men’s hockey made its third consecutive Frozen Four appearance under Jay Pandolfo in 2024-25, and lost in the national championship game to Western Michigan, our five writers gave their takes on the fate of the 202526 Terriers.
Will this be the year for BU’s sixth national title? Let’s dive in:
ELI CLOUTIER
BHB Co-Director
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (34 games): 25-8-1
POSTSEASON FINISH: Win program’s sixth national championship
MVP: Cole Hutson
MOST IMPROVED: Sascha
Boumedienne
BOLD PREDICTION: Cole Hutson wins the Hobey Baker Award.
SAM ROBB O’HAGAN
BHB Co-Director
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (34 games): 24-8-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in NCAA regional semifinal
MVP: Mikhail Yegorov
MOST IMPROVED: Brandon
Svoboda
BOLD PREDICTION: BU leads the nation in goals per game.
HENRY DINH-PRICE
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (34 games): 26-7-1
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Frozen Four
MVP: Cole Hutson
MOST IMPROVED: Sascha Boumedienne
BOLD PREDICTION: Mikhail Yegorov wins the Mike Richter Award.
HANNAH CONNORS
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (34 games): 25-8-1
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Frozen Four
MVP: Cole Eiserman
MOST IMPROVED: Kamil
Bednarik
BOLD PREDICTION: Cole Hutson leads the country in points.
MARCUS ANTONELLI
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (34 games): 25-7-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Frozen Four
MVP: Cole Eiserman
MOST IMPROVED: Sascha
Boumedienne
BOLD PREDICTION: Three players score over five power-play goals.
What will BU women’s hockey do for an encore?
BHB writers predict the 2025-26 season
Funny story: We forgot to publish these online last season! The Blog wrote out all of its predictions for the BU women’s hockey team ahead of 2024-25, and they never saw the light of day.
Well, sort of. Even funnier story: We did print our predictions in our annual Hockey Issue (a physical newspaper, we mean), and all five of us had the Terriers with a losing record and a first or second-round conference tournament loss.
The Terriers noticed, and were more than happy to remind us after they went and won Hockey East.
Rest assured, the Blog is far more optimistic about BU as we enter the third season of the Tara Watchorn era. But how will the Terriers follow one of the most exciting and unexpected seasons in program history?
Our five writers predicted the answer. Let’s dive in:
ELI CLOUTIER
BHB Co-Director
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (33 games): 18-13-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Hockey East semifinal
MVP: Michelle Pasiechnyk
MOST IMPROVED: Keira Healey
BOLD PREDICTION: Michelle Pasiechnyk wins NCAA Goaltender of the Year, again.
SAM ROBB O’HAGAN
BHB Co-Director
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (33 games): 21-10-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Hockey East final
MVP: Luisa and Lilli Welcke
MOST IMPROVED: Kaileigh Quigg
BOLD PREDICTION: BU wins its first Beanpot since 2018.
HENRY DINH-PRICE
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (33 games): 19-12-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Hockey East final
MVP: Michelle Pasiechnyk
MOST IMPROVED: Keira Healey
BOLD PREDICTION: BU enters January’s Friendship Four with a losing record.
HANNAH CONNORS
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (33 games): 20-10-3
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in NCAA Regional semi-final
MVP: Riley Walsh
MOST IMPROVED: Kaileigh Quigg
BOLD PREDICTION: BU earns an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
MARCUS ANTONELLI
BHB Writer
REGULAR SEASON RECORD (33 games): 20-11-2
POSTSEASON FINISH: Loss in Hockey East final
MVP: Michelle Pasiechnyk
MOST IMPROVED: Keira Healey
BOLD PREDICTION: Anežka Čabelová contends for Hockey East Third Team.
Lauren Albano, Editor-in-Chief
Samantha Genzer, Managing Co-Editor
Crystal Yormick, Managing Co-Editor
Kailyn Smith, Sports Editor
Jenny Chen, Layout Co-Editor
Emma Clement, Graphics Editor & Layout Co-Editor
Eli Cloutier, Co-Director
Sam Robb O’Hagan, Co-Director
Henry Dinh-Price, Writer
Hannah Connors, Writer Marcus Antonelli, Writer Cristina Romano, Photographer
BY SAM ROBB O’HAGAN BHB Co-Director
Vs. Michigan State, Oct. 17 and Oct. 18
Last season’s standout nonconference series was also at Agganis Arena, also against a Big 10 power from Michigan … and it didn’t go great, with BU imploding in the opener against the Wolverines before losing the finale in overtime. That turned out to be the lowest point of a rough start to the year, but things got better from there.
Still, head coach Jay Pandolfo and Co. would like to avoid that fate against Michigan State this season. The Spartans — reigning Big 10 champions — will be an even tougher test. Reigning Hobey Baker Award winner Isaac Howard is gone, but he’s being replaced by Porter Martone, Cayden Lindstrom and Ryker Lee — all first-round picks from the past two NHL Drafts. And for a BU team that will be more talented but even younger and less experienced than last season, MSU will be a telling early-season measuring stick.
Vs. UConn, Oct. 24, at UConn, Oct. 25
Super interesting kickoff to BU’s Hockey East schedule here.
The Terriers played their first league game against the Huskies last season, too, and left with a frustrating 4-2 standalone victory at Agganis.
That was when everyone thought UConn would be in the cellar of Hockey East. The Huskies were not. They wound up defeating BU in the Hockey East semifinal in March, after which Pandolfo was livid with the Terriers’ performance. UConn played a style that gave BU issues all three times the teams matched up last year — if this series in late October goes well for the Terriers, it’ll be a big sign of growth.
Vs. Cornell, Red Hot Hockey, Nov. 29 — at Madison Square Garden
Red Hot Hockey is always fun, and for many of the players, it’s their first time playing at MSG. But in 2025-26, it will arguably be BU’s second toughest non-conference test, and a rematch of last year’s NCAA regional final.
Cornell is entering a Mike Schafer-less world, so it’s hard to know what the Big Red will look like. But if it’s anything similar to Schafer’s slow, hyper-physical brand, the defending ECAC champions will be a challenge.
Vs. Boston College, Jan. 30
Does anyone remember BU’s last standalone matchup with BC? When the Terriers conceded nine goals at Conte Forum to a team that finished eighth in the league?
Wasn’t great, but then again, none of BU’s non-Beanpot matchups with the Eagles have gone well lately. The Terriers are 0-4 in such games the last two seasons, but in 2025-26, they’ll get an added crack at their hated rivals. Also, BC, which was voted fifth in the Hockey East preseason poll, doesn’t project to be as good this season as it was the previous two. Vs. Maine, Feb. 6
This is a fascinating one. The game between each Beanpot Monday is always a battle, but it’s at least been against Merrimack — a mid-tier Hockey East program — the past two years.
This year? Defending league champion Maine. That’s a huge game independent of the Beanpot’s schedule. This matchup at Agganis will be a telling test — not just of how BU matches up against the Black Bears on the ice, but of how a young and ultra-talented group can keep its focus away from the Beanpot for what will likely be a huge game in the Hockey East standings.
BY SAM ROBB O’HAGAN BHB Co-Director
Vs. Minnesota, Oct. 3 and Oct. 4
BU went to Minneapolis last October with house money. The Terriers very nearly stole a game from the No. 2 team in the country — a pivotal dose of confidence right at the start of the year — and the rest is history. By the time the Terriers won Hockey East, it was worth wondering: Could BU have actually beaten Minnesota had they played at the end of the season, not during the infancy of the program’s revival?
This October, we’ll get our answer — sort of. The Gophers, coming off another Frozen Four appearance, will be a top 5 team in the nation when they travel to Wally B. The Terriers lost a ton of experienced contributors, so they likely won’t be as good to start 2025-26 as they were to finish 202425. Still, the program’s stated goal is to sustain competitiveness on the national stage. Tara Watchorn and Co. took an enormous first step on that journey last season — now, we’ll see if they can take another.
What a way to start the year.
At Colgate, Oct. 10 and Oct. 11
There isn’t a greater indicator on BU’s schedule of the progress made under Watchorn than this series. A year ago, the Terriers’ second non-
conference series was at Syracuse, a middling AHA program. This year, it’s at Colgate, which has won four of the last five ECAC titles and just graduated the PWHL’s draft No. 1 pick, Kristýna Kaltounková.
The Raiders will likely be a top 5 team, or at least be ranked in the top 10, when BU makes the trip to Hamilton, New York. between their games against Colgate and Minnesota. The Terriers could have four chances at their first top 10 victory since 2021.
Vs. Boston College, Nov. 14 — at Agganis Arena
BU broke a women’s hockey attendance record last November when BC came to Agganis Arena for a Friday primetime matchup. Even after the women moved back to the newly-renovated Wally B, BU is running it back at Agganis this year.
The BU men will be out of town, so this matchup — a Friday series finale this time, after a Thursday night opener at BC — will be in primetime again. And, of course, the Green Line Rivalry will be a big early-season test. The Terriers were 3-1 against the Eagles last year.
Vs. Minnesota Duluth/ Quinnipiac/Harvard, Friendship Four, Jan. 2 and Jan. 3 — in Belfast, Northern Ireland
A season after the BU men’s
team won the Belpot, the Terrier women will hop across the pond for the Friendship Four’s inaugural women’s tournament. That’s significant enough in its own right — but BU’s competition in Belfast, Northern Ireland, offers another big non-conference test.
Minnesota Duluth is a blueblood, one of only five programs with a national championship. The Bulldogs made their fifth consecutive NCAA tournament last season. Quinnipiac is no joke either: The Bobcats finished fifth in the ECAC and 10th in USCHO’s final poll in 2025 — and they’ll feature Alex Law, a BU transfer.
No matter what, the Terriers will face one of those teams, and they could face both.
At Northeastern, vs. UConn, vs. Providence, at Boston College, Feb. 13-14, Feb. 20-21
This is a gauntlet. To finish the regular season, BU will face each of its fellow top-five Hockey East teams. If the league standings are as jammed as they were at the end of last year, these games will be enormous.
The Terriers got their toughest Hockey East test at the very end last season, when they lost the regular season title after UConn swept them. They’ll get an even tougher one to conclude 2025-26.
