"If we’re overconfident, we’d have to check ourselves into Mattapan State Hospital," said the Boston University head coach as he looked ahead to his team’s quarterfinal opponent in the Hockey East tournament.
On Friday night, Merrimack College will face off against BU in Game 1 of a best-of-three series at Agganis Arena (7:30 p.m., NESN).
The defending Hockey East and national champion Terriers have good reason to be confident heading into the playoffs. As one of the hottest teams in the nation since the new year began, they have boasted the best record in Hockey East (11-5-0) after an unimpressive first half that found BU in last place at the end of November.
"Our season has been a tale of two cities almost," Parker said. "The first semester, I thought we really underachieved and didn’t play hard enough. Some of that was effort, but some of it had to do with us tweaking the lines and trying to figure out how we were going to survive that. We’ve got that solved."
BU's record against Merrimack has been lopsided in recent memory. Over the last six seasons, BU is 17-1-0, with the lone Warrior victory coming this past November in front of the first sellout crowd at Merrimack’s Lawler Arena since 2002. The home team jumped out to an early lead with five unanswered goals en route to a 6-3 win over the Terriers.
The Warriors dropped the next two hard-fought games in Boston, both by a 6-4 margin.
"We weren’t even close to them in the game we lost up at Merrimack, and they could have won either of the games that were played [at Agganis Arena],” said Parker, whose team only outscored the Warriors 15-14 this season.
Merrimack head coach Mark Dennehy is unsurprised by Parker's praise — and unfazed.
"I’m sure Coach Parker is going to have everyone believe that we are the favorites," Dennehy joked.
But the truth is, Dennehy has had his players believing that with a little extra effort, they could run with any team at all this year.
"At 211 degrees, all you have is a pot of hot water," Dennehy said. "At 212 degrees, that water boils and creates steam, and steam can power a locomotive. All it takes is that one extra degree to move tons of metal."
It is a mantra the Warriors have tried to live by this season — a mantra coined by sophomore forward Elliott Sheen earlier this season as he read an article about boiling water on the Internet. It has become the young team's rallying cry. They have even emblazoned "One Extra Degree" on the back of their warmup T-shirts.
"The season before, we led the country in games lost by a single goal with 14," said Dennehy. "So that one degree is the big difference when you're focusing on not losing one-goal games. This year, the freshmen have embraced it."
One of those freshmen is center Stephane Da Costa. Tallying 15 goals (second in the nation among freshmen) and 29 assists (second in the nation among freshmen) for 44 points (first in the nation among freshmen), Da Costa has been a major key to the Warriors' success.
"If Da Costa would’ve come a couple of years ago, it wouldn’t have had as much of an effect because we weren’t good enough yet," Dennehy said. "Now, with [Chris] Barton, [Karl] Stollery and [Jesse] Todd, just to name a few, we’re a much better hockey team. What he gives us is the ability to take a game into his hands and do some special things."
In one of the tightest playoff races in Hockey East history, one degree of effort could literally be the difference between playing this weekend and heading back to campus. For instance, Northeastern’s season ended after the Huskies finished just two points behind the Warriors and one point behind Vermont, which earned the conference's final playoff berth. The close race has led to an early playoff atmosphere in the league.
"We’ve been in playoff mode for nine games," Dennehy said. "We were on the outside looking in. We divided [the remainder of the season] up by three three-game playoff series, and [we] thought if we could win all three, we could play in an actual playoff series."
History is on the side of the Terriers, the seven-time Hockey East champions and five-time NCAA champions — and playing on the road could be the difference for a Warriors team that set a new school record (since moving to Division I) with a 12-3-1 record at home. The Warriors are just 3-13-1 away from North Andover, but they finished the season strong with a 3-1-1 record in their last five on the road.
Merrimack teams are 3-25 lifetime in playoff games and have advanced to the semifinals just once in their history. That one time, however, came after upsetting the defending Hockey East champion Terriers in 1998. BU was ranked first in the nation when it lost to the eighth-seeded Warriors in a three-game series at Walter Brown Arena.
Perhaps "One Extra Degree" will be the difference this season against the team that "Burned the Boats" last year.
