O’Connell confident
BU coach believes in well-rounded group
With David Quinn now the coach of the New York Rangers, his Boston University successor, Albie O’Connell, gets a long awaited and well deserved shot at running his own program.
“Pressure? I honestly don’t feel too much pressure right now. It’s nice to have a 0-0-0 record,’’ said O’Connell, a former Terriers captain and career 108-point scorer. “I think that we believe in what we’re doing. We have a good staff, a good group of guys on the ice, off the ice, and in the locker room. We’re pretty confident in the way we want to play. But it’ll be a process, no doubt. I think it’s a good club. We have a lot of balance. We have some size, and strength and we’ve added some speed to the entire group, top to bottom.”
The Terriers were ranked No. 8 in the most recent USCHO national poll.
“We have a lot of guys coming back,” said O’Connell. “We had a lot of guys come on during the second half last year like (Logan) Cockerill, (Cam) Crotty, (Chad) Krys. We have good leadership in (Bobo) Carpenter and (Dante) Fabbro.’’
One key will be the return of junior goaltender Jake Oettinger, who appears ready to emerge among the nation’s elite.
“It’s nice that he’s in his third year,” said O’Connell. “He’s only 19, so he’s still young. He has a lot of games under his belt. I think that winning the (Hockey East) championship last year will help. There were a lot of ups and downs during the season when we still getting organized in our own end. Once we straightened everything out, he played well. Now, he has no distractions. There’s no (World) Juniors. No (NHL) draft. No Olympics. Last year, at times, we hung him out to dry, but now he’s ready to go. I think he’s pretty calm by nature.”
Another key area is at forward where Brady Tkachuk turned pro with Buffalo after one season.
“Brady is certainly going to be a great player. He didn’t score as much as probably wanted in the first half but he came on during the second half, and he would have had big impact for us this year,” O’Connell said. “But with Patrick Harper, who missed the entire second half, coming back, and with some of the freshmen that we’ve added we could be even better.”
Harper was leading BU in scoring with 21 points in 20 games before missing the last 20 games due to a respiratory illness.
Among the freshmen are Joel Farabee, a 6-foot-1 skater off the U.S. National Development Team.
“He has a real high compete level and he doesn’t panic with the puck. He has a chance to come in right away and really be a good high-end caliber player,’’ O’Connell said. “But he’s not the only one. We also have other guys like Jake Wise (Reading) and Mark Cheremeta and the two new defensemen Dominic Vidoli and Hugo Blixt.”
Farrabee and Wise, who are expected to make immediate impacts, strutted their stuff in the recent 7-1 exhibition win over Acadia of Canada, each posting a goal and assist.
O’Connell brought former Holy Cross coach and Winthrop native Paul Pearl to fill his old position. Len Quesnelle and Brian Eklund round out the staff.
‘Pressure? I honestly don’t feel too much pressure right now. I think it’s a good club. We have a lot of balance. We have some size, and strength and we’ve added some speed to the entire group, top to bottom.’ — NEW BU HOCKEY COACH ALBIE O’CONNELL