Title memory still fresh for Boston College
with North Dakota. After a scoreless first, B.C. jumped to a 2-0 lead with second-period goals scored by Kobasew and Mike Lephart.
“We get a couple. And I guess with our history you’re still kind of nervous,” Scuderi said. “Just like they say in the [NHL] playoffs, the clock is everyone’s enemy. That’s certainly what it felt like. They get one and you’re thinking, ‘All right, stay with it.’ They just kept coming. They were really coming on late.”
With Gionta in the box and the North Dakota net empty, the Fighting Sioux scored with 3:42 left in regulation to get within a goal. They pulled their goalie again and got the equalizer with 1:23 on the clock. The game was going to overtime.
The locker room was silent at first as the Eagles processed what had happened. Scuderi was one of the seniors who finally spoke up, saying, “Hey, we need a goal to win a national championship. Who cares about the past?”
Then Marty Hughes had something to say. Hughes, a senior forward, had lost his mother weeks earlier. York loaded the entire team onto a bus and drove them down to Long Island for her funeral.
Hughes, according to Hennes, told his Eagles teammates: “This isn’t challenging. This is a hockey game. We’ve got this. We’ve been the best team all year. This is nothing. I lost my mother. But I’m not going to lose this with you guys.”
Hennes, his voice cracking while recalling those words, said: “It was a pretty special moment. From that moment on, there wasn’t a lot said in that locker room before going out for overtime. That was the tipping point.”
Making history
The Eagles didn’t wait too long. Krys Kolanos charged down the left wing with the puck on his backhand, pulled it around a flatfooted defender and, while getting hauled down, tucked it past the goalie 4:43 into overtime.
The coaching staff mobbed York on the bench as Hennes, Forrest and the rest of the Eagles players raced to the far corner to pile on top of Kolanos.
“Jumping over the boards, you felt like you could have touched the sky,” Hennes said. “We were excited, but to see the excitement of that senior class it was very easy to get caught up in the emotion and follow their lead with the celebration.”
It was Boston College’s first men’s NCAA hockey championship since 1949.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the picture, but I remember the guy in the corner up there in Albany,” said Forrest, now the head coach for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League. “He was holding a sign that said, ‘Now I can die in peace,’ or something like that. It was nice to be a small part of that history.”
Scuderi and Orpik would soon leave Boston College for WilkesBarre/Scranton, teaming up again years later to win the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 2009.
Hennes, after getting his doctorate from Parker College of Chiropractic Medicine in Dallas, was coaching the Penguins during the Cup runs in 2016 and 2017.
Forrest joined the organization as a coach before that 2017 title and the Penguins last offseason promoted him to be head coach for their AHL club. He admits it is “crazy,” whether it is coincidence or not, that four kids from that 2001 title team put their fingerprints on recent Penguins history, too.
“The impact of Brooks and Scud is pretty incredible, their playing careers here and how they helped us win Cups,” Forrest said. “It’s a little different, the imprint Ty and I get to put on it. But hopefully we impact the future in a positive way.”