ST. LOUIS - The game was played here at Enterprise Center Saturday night, but if you closed your eyes and only listened to the crowd, you would have thought it was in Kalamazoo.
Western Michigan Broncos fans were about 10 times louder than Boston University’s traveling partisans on the decibel meter.
Imagine, then, how loud it was when the final buzzer sounded at the NCAA hockey championship game. When it did, Broncos fans practically blew the roof off, exulting in the 52-year-old program’s first national title, winning 6-2.
Kalamazooans will wake up Sunday morning knowing they now are home to the best college hockey team on the planet. The Broncos not only dethroned the previous national champion, Denver, on Thursday night, they outplayed the blue-blooded Bostonians, a school in which Frozen Four appearances have been a virtual rite of passage.
Fourth-line right winger Garrett Szydlowski’s wrist shot past BU goalie Mikhail Yegorov gave the Broncos a 4-2 third-period lead, and goalie Hampton Slukynsky – despite having the yips all night on shots that never were frozen under his pads, leading to two goals and two near-goals – hung on, allowing his team to add two late goals.
Did that home-crowd-feel have a positive effect on the Broncos? In the first period, it sure looked like it. Western Michigan got the first goal of the night early, at the 1:38 mark, on a Wyatt Schingoethe goal. Teammate Liro Kakkarainen put a turnround wrist shot from near the blue line on net, and Schingoethe got his stick blade on it, redirecting it past big (6-foot-5, 180 pound) BU freshman goalie Yegorov.
The Broncos had a couple of Grade A chances to extend the lead, but failed to do so. Probably the best chance was a one-timer for Szydlowski on a 2-on-1 break, but he fanned on the shot.
The Terriers seized on the missed opportunities and got the tying goal at the 7:12 mark, when Slukynsky lost sight of the puck in the crease after making a save, and Terriers winger Cole Eiserman (no relation to Steve) tapped it home for the equalizer.
Just when the Terriers started to look like the team with better momentum, the Broncos struck back to retake the lead at 15:01. Defenseman Cole Crusberg-Roseen, who came into the game with only two career goals in 63 games, put a slap shot past Yegorov after BU’s Shane Lachance turned the puck over to the oncoming Crusberg-Roseen.
The Broncos played a great first 10 minutes of the second period, and extended the lead to 3-1 in the process. Fourth-line left wing Ty Henricks, a freshman from Mission Viejo, Calif., put home the rebound of a shot from Grand Rapids native and linemate Cam Knuble.
But the Terriers, a 25-time Frozen Four participant and five-time national champion, were never going to be an easy out. They cut the lead to 3-2 at 10:42 of the second when, once again, Slukynsky failed to wrap up the puck after a save, Lachance to atone for his earlier mistake and poke it home while hitting Slukynsky’s pads with the blade. The power-play goal withstood a Broncos challenge for goalie interference.
Knuble came within an inch of putting the Broncos up 4-2, but a puck that deflected off his right skate in the slot bounced off the right post. The Terriers then went back on the power play at 15:40 after Henricks was sent to the box for slashing.
This time, though, the Broncos killed it off and took a 3-2 lead into the dressing room after two.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Western Michigan score: Broncos dominate Boston U, win NCAA title
