Coveted college goalie's roller-coaster month ends in Ottawa
What a difference a few weeks can make.
Nearly one month after Boston University's Matt O'Connor lost the NCAA Division 1 national championship game on the heels of an own-goal late in the third period against Providence College, the goaltender signed a two-year, entry-level deal with the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.
The media frenzy of the past few weeks was a far cry from the atmosphere around O'Connor on April 11, the night of the national championship game. O'Connor and the Terriers seemed trophy-bound that night as they held a 3-2 lead over the Friars more than halfway through the third period of the title game.
Disaster struck with 8:36 left in regulation when Providence's Tom Parisi dumped a puck into the BU zone, a normally harmless play. O'Connor attempted to catch the puck in order to get a whistle, but it somehow slipped out of his glove and trickled into the net instead to tie the game at 3-3.
"It was just a really bad series of indecisiveness and miscommunication," O'Connor told FOX Sports on Saturday. "For it to end up in the back of the net like that, it was a bit of a shock, to be honest. As a goalie, you have a pretty positive mentality. You're really focused on making saves. You don't even really know a lot of the time that a goal can go in like that.
"It was definitely a feeling of internal guilt for doing that and regret for having that happen."
O'Connor and the Terriers did not recover from the mistake. Just 2:19 after O'Connor's gaffe, Providence scored the game-winning goal off a faceoff. The 4-3 loss in the title game was a crushing end to what had been an incredible season for BU. The Terriers, who compiled a 10-21-4 record in 2013-14, engineered the fifth-best turnaround in NCAA Division 1 history in 2014-15 to finish with a 28-8-5 record.
O'Connor also enjoyed a strong season. He was 25-4-4 with a .927 save percentage. O’Connor ranks second in program history in career save percentage (.921) behind John Curry (.923), who graduated in 2007 and is currently in the Minnesota Wild system.
Although Curry and O'Connor never played together, O'Connor said the fellow Terrier's support after the national championship game helped him move past the mistake.
"John Curry reached out to me, and it was pretty nice," O'Connor said. "He was really great about allowing me to feel bad about the loss in the way I should but not take any more burden than I should, and it was just really special for him to reach out to me and express what a good year I had, congratulate me on a good season. Just to know that he's thinking about me, that was pretty special."
The support from other goalies extended beyond Curry. Boston is a city full of people who played hockey, and O'Connor said he met many people who were simply walking by him on the street and stopped to wish him well.
"We're a bit of a fraternity, goalies," O'Connor said. "We've all been through some adversity, and I think every goalie, even on social media, these young goalies, kids, they'd be there and be very compassionate toward me. It was pretty touching to see how amazing the hockey world is. All of those people were impacted from a human perspective; it was something that I had not expected at all."
O'Connor did not have much time to dwell on the national championship gaffe. NHL teams had started showing interest in signing O'Connor after his sophomore season, but O'Connor chose to return to BU for 2014-15 because he wanted to finish his education and win a trophy.
He realized both goals, as O'Connor earned enough credits to graduate this spring with a degree in business administration and management.
And while BU did win three trophies, O'Connor said the loss in the national championship game made it tough for him to decide to leave school. Plus, O'Connor said the idea of staying was more tempting considering that, with the exception of two graduating seniors, most of BU's 2014-15 team will return next season.
"I had not made any decisions [before the national championship game] and [captain and Bruins draft pick Matt] Grzelyck decided to come back, and [Jack] Eichel, there's no guarantees," O'Connor said. "So with all these great players, there's a lot of great benefits to coming back.
"I was seeing myself and the team we'd have if we did all come back and that's a pretty special feeling to imagine yourself back at BU, but it's very tough to necessarily draw the kind of interest I did [from NHL teams] this year. From a business perspective, you could say that it's smart to leave at the end of this year. But from a heart perspective, you want to stay at BU for four years."
Once O'Connor made the decision to leave, the 23-year-old embarked on a series of visits to interested teams. His first visit was with Ottawa.
"They were interested in me, and I think it helped me to realize that that mistake doesn't define me at all as a goalie," O'Connor said. "I think it might have been actually pretty therapeutic. I made the decision to go alone and not have anyone else, and I think that was great. I was able to get a really cool personal connection with the people that I met and have a sincere conversation with them about the future. Hockey is a big business, and to be able to go on the visit was pretty empowering in the sense that I really felt that wherever I was going to go, it would be someplace I trusted the people."
After a couple weeks of visits and interviews, O'Connor narrowed his list of prospective teams to four organizations: the New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers and Senators. O'Connor put off his final decision until he completed his final exams at BU.
His last exam was on Friday, and by Saturday, he made the first step in his post-BU career by choosing to sign with Ottawa. There is familiarity between O'Connor and the Senators; he attended a Senators development camp in the summer of 2011, and Ottawa scouts had been at BU games all season. As a Toronto native, O'Connor said he did not want to let the idea of playing in Canada affect his decision, because he felt his choice should be more about business and player development.
He settled on Ottawa, he said, because he liked how character-oriented the organization is, and he noted he is especially excited to grow as a player under the tutelage of Ottawa goalie coach Rick Wamsley. O'Connor said the team's skill at developing players was obvious considering many of the prospects he skated with at the development camp in 2011 were on the NHL roster for the Senators by the end of this season.
He also said the emergence of Andrew Hammond, a 27-year-old former college goalie who led Ottawa on a surprising run to the playoffs, proves the team can do wonders for goalies.
"It's exciting, especially since he's a college goalie from Bowling Green, an older goalie and he still had a shot," O'Connor said. "It's pretty cool, that track record of the goalie development with him. It's really good to have goalies that are able to do that within the organization. It says a lot about the goalie but also the people that have been preparing him for that.
"Any time you see a goalie develop after college and then have success in the NHL, it's pretty exciting for a college goalie. It just feels a little bit more realistic."
Professional hockey will be a big adjustment for O'Connor, who will likely spend the majority of his time next season with the team's AHL affiliate, the Binghamton Senators. Although O'Connor has great size at 6 feet 5 and 204 pounds, he said he needs to improve on lateral movement, positioning, quickness in the crease and --not surprisingly -- his decision-making when playing the puck.
"I just need to have a bit more grace and assertiveness and urgency when I'm making a decision with the puck, even when there is less pressure," O'Connor said. "But I think that's a smaller, quick fix."
And while O'Connor said he's moved on from his mistake in the national championship game, he said moving on from his life at BU willl be difficult.
"I really feel really emotional about leaving BU and the people here and the program," O'Connor said. "Everyone was very close, and we really cherished our time together every time we came to the rink. That's what BU really taught me, is that it pays off when you come to the rink and you cherish your time together and you put in a real good effort. It rubs off on everyone.
"To be able to be in the position I was in, I think this is just a testament to BU hockey. I love BU and I'm going to be very sad to leave."
