NCAA Hockey 101: Boston University coach battles life as a juggernaut

BOSTON — Four first-round picks.

Four second-round picks.

A third-round pick.

Two fifth-round picks.

Add in a 6-foot-4 freshman goaltender that most project as a first- or second-round pick in next June’s draft, and Boston University has what is inarguably the most on-paper talented college hockey team ever assembled.

To illustrate the extent of the talent, there was a stretch in the first period of the Terriers’ exhibition game against Prince Edward Island on Saturday in which they rolled a five-man unit of three firsts and two seconds, who were then replaced by a unit sporting a first and a third. Then five undrafted guys, all of whom were at least decent college hockey players. Then a group with a first and two seconds.

How do you answer that? The answer is, “You probably don’t.”

Perhaps a better question for how far BU can go this year is: How do you manage that? The answer for coach David Quinn might be, “Being hard on them.”

You hear a lot in hockey about how hard it is to manage expectations for super-talented teams. And while talent outs far more often than not, that’s not always the case. Quinn points that these kids know how good BU is projected to be simply because of this collection of immense quality. And he’s doing his level best to hammer that out of them.

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“One of the very first things I said to them in the first meeting, was, ‘You know what people are sick of? You.’ I know that because I’m sick of hearing about how good we’re going to be,” Quinn said at Hockey East media day, at which both the league’s coaches and attendant media overwhelmingly picked the Terriers to finish first in the conference.

It’s easy to understand why everyone is so high on this team. It’s also easy to understand why Quinn’s job this year effectively boils down to making sure everyone stays level-headed. On paper this team should waltz to significant success but Hockey East is the toughest top-to-bottom division in college hockey almost every year. And it’s not as though big expectations haven’t ended in tears for the Terriers before.

Just two seasons ago, with Jack Eichel top-lining another deeply talented Terrier team (eight drafted players plus a few more un-drafteds who have already gotten some NHL experience), the Frozen Four looked like a hometown coronation. But BU didn’t win. It was the only trophy they played for that year that they didn’t win with a jaunty ease. And the way they lost was, of course, a knife in the gut.

Last year the team crashed out of two playoff tournaments before many — including Quinn, by his own admission — would have predicted.

“We had a good team last year and we didn’t make it past the first round of the playoffs,” said senior defenseman Doyle Somerby, a 2012 fifth-round Islanders pick. “The Providence game in the national championship definitely still stings a lot. You never stop thinking about that. That’s why I really wanted to come back [for a senior season] and hopefully end on a happy note. It definitely is something that has pushed a lot of us to get back into the weight room. I don’t want to feel that way again.”

A team this good doesn’t necessarily need to be motivated by Quinn or anyone else, per se. Somerby said the level of competition among the defense in particular has everyone playing very hard just to earn a spot. This is a blue line with two firsts, two seconds, a third, a fifth, and two undrafted guys who would easily play every game for just about any other team in college hockey. This is a blue line so deep it led Brandon Fortunato, an undrafted player who earned a spot on the US team at last year’s World Juniors, to transfer to another school because he wouldn’t have gotten top-four minutes at BU.

“If a guy makes a mistake [in practice], you can see the frustration,” Somerby said. “And you’re like, ‘It’s practice, we have to settle down.’ But we have eight defensemen who can play and everyone knows it.”

One of Quinn’s big quotes at the NHL Draft, in which six of BU’s current roster players were selected, was that only one person could screw this season up for the Terriers, and it’s him. To some extent the job of putting together lines of second- and first-round picks isn’t all that difficult. Nor is sending another platoon of those players over the boards.

Indeed, that’s the reason Jerry York has somehow never won coach of the year in Hockey East, and only won coach of the year with Clarkson in 1977 despite being the best coach in college hockey history: When you attract incredible amounts of talent, the job of winning is seen as not only simple, but expected.

If BU romps this year, don’t place too many bets on postseason awards landing on Quinn’s shelf.

Instead, Quinn’s job becomes more of a management role in some ways. Managing expectations, managing personalities, managing development. These kids come to the table with game-breaking ability, so he can’t teach them anything skill-wise. It’s shading in the other aspects of the game, getting through a season, and so on that matters now.

Quinn was famously hard on Eichel for just about everything that didn’t go exactly right. That was what Eichel needed at the time, because he’d been told his whole life that everything he did was great. He filled the nets and the rest sorted itself out, painting over a lot of problems. That remained true at BU, but Quinn had him really focus on the deficiencies in his game. That’s the pro style of coaching, to some extent, and BU’s high-talent players go there because of it.

“He’s obviously coached in the pros before,” said sophomore second-round pick Jacob Forsbacka Karlsson. “I think all of us have had our fair share of, well, not yelling, but discrimination from him. I think one of the reasons so many talented guys are coming here is he’s the kind of coach who will give you a little liberty on the ice to show off your hockey sense and make plays without restricting you.”

This all goes without mentioning just how good some of the kids coming in — Arizona pick Clayton Keller (No. 7 overall), Nashville’s Dante Fabbro (No. 17), the Islanders’ Kieffer Bellows (No. 19), Chicago’s Chad Krys (No. 51), Nashville’s Patrick Harper (No. 138), and expected 2017 high pick Jake Oettinger, among others — will actually be.

When Jack Eichel first came to Boston University two years ago, there was some question as to how effective a kid who was barely 18 could be in Hockey East and NCAA hockey at large. No matter how talented he was, there had to be some question as to whether playing against players as much as seven years older than him would affect his ability to dominate the sport as he had for the US National Team Development Program.

And Eichel, of course, shredded college hockey for 71 points in 40 games — the most by a freshman in more than two decades — and easily won the Hobey Baker. He also helped guide a BU team that could have previously been defined as “perfectly fine” to one of the few 28-win seasons in Hockey East’s recent history, and within one goaltending gaffe of a national title.

None of these kids are Jack Eichel, because basically no one in college hockey history is Jack Eichel. But some of them at the very least in the ballpark. And if you have, say, three or four players who provide 80 percent of the on-ice impact Eichel did, well, that’s plenty of reason for huge amounts of optimism. It’s really not outside the realm of possibility that this team clears 30 wins, an extreme rarity in college hockey, and wins every trophy available to it.

The things they can do on the ice are self-evident. Harper went 5-2-7 in that first exhibition (to be fair, it was marred by 31 minor penalties and a handful of majors, so special teams were very much the order of the day). Keller had a hat trick. Oettinger didn’t allow a goal in a period of work. Krys had three assists before he was tossed late in the second period for a hit from behind (so apparently he’s physical, too).

Add in the talent level of some of the sophomores like Charlie McAvoy (another guy taken in the first round this year), Jordan Greenway, Forsbacka Karlsson, and so on, and you see why the hype train started up early.

“These kids are human,” Quinn said. “They read the internet. They read everything that’s published. It’s a nightmare for a coaching staff.”

Managing expectations is one thing, but keeping kids within themselves is another entirely. Quinn talked a lot about practicing right and being prepared to play every game. “Night in and night out” seems to be the common phrase here. Eichel didn’t take too many games off in his one-year college career, and one suspects that will also be true of this year’s crop of super-talents.

Everyone working hard in spite — or perhaps because — of the talent level is what makes BU’s future success so likely. Not to hand them the national title on Oct. 4, but that quite literally has to be the most realistic goal. Forsbacka Karlsson said they realistically want to “win championships.” Plural. That probably means the Beanpot, the regular- and postseason Hockey East titles, and the NCAA tournament. As a baseline.

Neither Quinn nor teammates (nor, indeed, opponents, who will throw their A-plus-plus-plus games at this team every night) are going to let anyone shirk responsibilities. Not with two straight years of crushing postseason disappointment still lingering like poison ivy they won’t stop scratching. It comes up a lot, and that’s not an accident.

The good news for the Terriers is that Eichel was one man. One smooth-skating, extra-strong, point-producing generational high-end talent of a man, but just one man nonetheless. This year, the talent is legion. If one or even two high-level players have an off night, there are at least half a dozen who can pick up the slack.

“The game doesn’t change,” Quinn said. “There’s a couple nets out there. A couple blue lines and a center red line. Some circles. You go play hockey. The formula for success is no different for us than anyone else.”

But it’s tough to think of anyone who’s going to play hockey better than BU on its worst day.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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