Terrier defenseman Bryan Miller was named to the Northeast Region All-Tournament Team.

The 2002-03 season came to a end for the Terrier hockey team on Saturday (March 29th) as the region's top-seeded New Hampshire Wildcats skated to a 3-0 win in the final game of the NCAA Northeast Region Tournament.

The Terriers closed out their season with an overall record of 25-14-3 and were denied an opportunity to their 21st trip to the Frozen Four. Instead, New Hampshire, which improved to 27-7-6, advanced to the Frozen Four where it will meet Cornell in the national semifinal game on April 10th in Buffalo, NY.

"Frankly, that was the type of game that we wanted to play as far as how the game went," Terrier head coach Jack Parker said after the game. "There was a little time in the second period where it got a little wide open and we tried to slow it up with a little trap. For the most part, it was the way that we liked to have it go. We wanted it to be a low scoring game. We wanted it to be a low shooting game."

Each team finished with 27 shots. The Terriers had the edge in the first period, 10-7, while the Wildcats enjoyed an advantage in the third period, 14-11. In the second period, each team had 6 shots.

Ironically, that was the only period in which the Wildcats did not score, as they had one in the first and two in the third. The final goal came into an empty net with 1:05 to play in regulation.

Sean Fields finished the season with a school-record 1035 saves.

New Hampshire scored the only goal it would need at 13:09 of the first period when Josh Prudden deflected a shot that seemed to go off his body past Terrier goalie Sean Fields.

Fields went on to make 24 saves for the game to finish the season with a school-record 1035 saves, eclipsing the former mark of 1027 set by Scott Cashman during the 1989-90 season.

Neither team scored in the second period as just one goal separated a trip to Buffalo, NY and the Frozen Four from packing your bags and calling it a season as the teams entered the third period.

New Hampshire scored its second goal at 9:12 of the period when Patrick Foley took advantage of an empty net as Fields was on the ice after making a save on a shot by Justin Aitkins. The play started when Jim Abbott swung a pass from the left circle in front of the net to Aitkins. He took a shot that Fields saved, but as Fields, who was sitting on the ice after the shot, tried to reach over to grab the loose puck, Foley beat him to the puck and was able to nudge it into the net.

In an effort to get on the scoreboard, Parker pulled Fields in the closing minutes of regulation. The move backfired when Sean Collins picked up the loose puck just inside the red line and fired into the empty net.

The Terriers' best effort to get on the scoreboard came in the second period when defenseman Bryan Miller shot from the point hit the cross bar. Frantisek Skladany also had a couple of chances, his best coming when he deflected a shot in close, but Ayers made the save. Finally, in the first period, Brian Collins came skating across the slot but he never got a quality shot off.

It marked the third straight game in which New Hampshire had blanked the Terriers making it the first time in the 82-year history of hockey at Boston University that one team had blanked the Terriers three times in one season. The last time the Terriers scored a goal against the Wildcats was with 2:41 to play in the third period of their 5-2 win on January 23rd. Two nights later, Mike Ayers turned aside all 38 Terrier shots in a 3-0 UNH win. The Terriers dominated play in that game, outshooting the Wildcats, 38-26, but could not beat Ayers. The discrepancy was greatest in the first period when the Terriers put 19 shots on net compared to 4 for the Wildcats.

Ayers came back in the Hockey East title game to turn aside 24-of-24 Terrier shots in a 1-0 overtime win by UNH.

Then came tonight's 3-0 win as the junior goalie stopped all 27 shots.

For the record, Ayers and UNH have now blanked the Terriers for a stretch of 194 minutes and 24 seconds.

Ayers' play earned him the Tournament's MVP honor. He was joined on the All-Tournament Team by Terrier defenseman Bryan Miller, Harvard forward Dominic Moore and three other New Hampshire players-defenseman Garrett Stafford and forwards Colin Hemingway and Preston Callender.