Terriers go on Keller instinct
Playing on a team with 11 NHL draft picks, sticking out should be close to impossible.
However, Boston University freshman center Clayton Keller has no trouble stepping from the shadows.
The 5-foot-10 Keller, who was selected in the first round last spring by Arizona, has been compared by some in a favorable way to BU legend John Cullen.
Cullen, who played from 198387, remains the Terriers’ all-time leading scorer with 241 points before going on to play In the NHL.
Coincidentally, Cullen once had the same No. 19 on the back of his “Boston” sweater that Keller now wears for the Terriers.
“That’s a great analogy,” said BU coach David Quinn, who was a teammate to Cullen and now is a coach to Keller.
Only Keller has more speed.
And it will be on display tomorrow night as the Terriers face Boston College in a Beanpot semifinal at the Garden.
“He has elite skill. He has elite hockey sense. He’s coachable. He works hard. He competes. It’s hard to find players with all of those characteristics,” Quinn continued about Keller. “His game is going to translate to the next level.”
So, how did BU find a player with those attributes?
“He wasn’t hard to find,” Quinn said with a deep laugh. “He wasn’t hard to find.”
“When I got the job, I had been out of college hockey for four years. (Former assistant) Steve (Greeley) got right to work and one of the names that we heard about was Clayton Keller. Steve went to the U.S. Under-15 Festival in Rochester, N.Y. And he was clearly the best player there. He was already deep into the recruiting process with a lot of schools. We asked him if he was going to visit BU and he said he wasn’t going to visit BU. He was already committed to visit Boston College and we kept on it. We said, ‘Look it, you’re already going to visit Boston College, why don’t you come to visit BU? It’s right down the street. Nobody visits BC that doesn’t visit BU. You visit BU and you go visit BC. That’s usually the way it works.
“So, Steve did a great job convincing him to come visit BU and, quite honestly, it was the first time that Steve and I sat in front of a recruit together. He was the first real recruit I had as a head coach at BU. I didn’t know how it was going to go. We spent about five hours with him here with his mom and dad and you could just feel that it was going well and three weeks later he committed to us,” said Quinn. “I think what that did was get the recruiting ball rolling. If you get a player of that caliber, more good players want to come play with him. You need that first star. But, then they have to produce when they get here and he has produced.”
Keller was part of a gold-medal-winning U.S. Junior National team but will be chasing something silver tomorrow, the city’s coveted Beanpot mug..
“When I first committed here I heard that it was a pretty special thing to be part of. I remember two years ago they were so successful and won the Beanpot when Jack Eichel and Matt Grzelcyk were here. So, I watched that,” said Keller, who has 13 goals, 16 assists and 29 points in 19 games to the Terriers. “I was committed here at the time, so it pretty special to watch that tournament. Hopefully, we can win that tournament and win the first game here on Monday.”