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CBS News
13-04-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
Boston University loses to Western Michigan in Frozen Four Championship
Boston University fell short in its bid for a sixth National Championship Saturday night in St. Louis. The Terriers lost to Western Michigan, 6-2, in the Frozen Four title game. BU had its chances early in game but the Broncos were the more aggressive team throughout the contest. Western Michigan never trailed in the title bout, and scored three goals in the third period to secure the school's first National Championship. Terriers freshman goaltender Mikhail Yegorov made 22 saves and kept the game close for two periods, but allowed five goals in the losing effort. Freshman Cole Eiserman and sophomore Shane Lachance scored BU's only goals in the game, as Western Michigan goalie Hampton Slukynsky made 24 saves for the Broncos. Western Michigan jumped on top early in an action-packed first period. The Broncos created a lot of traffic in front of the BU net and it paid off when senior winger Wyatt Schingoethe deflected a deep shot by Yegorov just 1:38 into the game. Yegorov came up with a big save at the 6:30 mark of the first when Western Michigan forward Liam Valente had an open lane to the net, and the Terriers tied the game a few moments later when persistence paid off for Eiserman. The forward kept poking at a loose puck in front of the Broncos net, and eventually poked it off the pads of Slukynsky and into the back of the net to knot the game at 1-1. It was the 25th goal of the season for Eiserman. The Terriers had a great chance to take a lead a minute later, but Quinn Hutson's 3-on-2 slapper was turned away by Slukynsky. The Broncos took a 2-1 lead with five minutes left in the first when Cole Crusberg-Roseen sent a nasty wrister by Yegorov. Western Michigan's rush started off a turnover by Hutson, and Crusberg-Roseen put home a big rebound to retake the lead. Western Michigan struck again just over five minutes into the second period as the Broncos kept pressuring Yegorov by rushing the net. Ty Hendricks put home a rebound off a Cam Knuble rush, putting Western Michigan on top 3-1. A two-goal edge is the most dangerous lead in hockey, and the Terriers cut into Western Michigan's after they got their first power play of the night with 9:34 left in the second period. The Bronco's Brian Kramer was called for holding when he wrapped up Nick Roukounakis on a drive to the net, and BU took advantage just 16 seconds into the man advantage. Ryan Greene fired a shot on Slukynsky, who made an initial save, but Lachance poked it into the net to make it a 3-2 game. Western Michigan challenged the call on the ice, believing Lachance interfered with Slukynsky on the play, but the call was upheld. It was Lachance's first goal of the tournament and 12th of the season. Knuble hit a post for Western Michigan with just over five minutes left in the second, and then BU went back on the man advantage with 4:20 left in the period when Henricks was whistled for slashing. But the Terriers got just one shot off during the power play, and BU's Devin Kaplan was sent to the box with 1:46 left for kneeing on a knee-to-knee hit on Iiro Hakkarainen. Yegorov stopped a shot by Alex Bump and two Western Michigan shots went wide to close the second period. BU was able to kill off the final 14 seconds of the power play to start the third. Cole Hutson had a great scoring chance at 16:34 when he tried to go five-hole on Slukynsky, but the bid was turned away. Matt Copponi wasn't able to poke in the rebound with a herd of Broncos blocking the net, including defenseman Joona Vaisanen, who sprawled out in the crease to keep BU from scoring. The Terriers had another golden opportunity at the 14:54 mark when Eiserman was all alone on Slukynsky, but the netminder turned away his point-blank scoring chance. Slukynsky had four big saves in a two-minute span, including stops on Cole Hutson and Greene, which helped set up the Western Michigan offense. Slukynsky's stop on Greene started a 2-on-1 for the Broncos, and Owen Michaels took it the distance before beating Yegorov with a wrister with 12:44 to play to give Western Michigan a 4-2 advantage. Terriers head coach Jay Pandolfo challenged a no-goal with 8:04 left in the game, when Copponi tried to poke in another puck that Slukynsky had covered up. Copponi was able to push the puck into the net, but it came after officials had blown the whistle. The no-goal call was upheld after the review. The Broncos got an insurance goal with 3:58 to play when Hakkarainen got a beautiful pass by Schingoethe and flicked the puck off Yegorov and into the net. The Terriers pulled Yegorov to get an extra attacker, but Western Michigan kept clogging the middle of the ice and Michaels scored an empty-netter to make it a 6-2 game with 2:07 to play. With Saturday's loss, the Terriers finish the 2024-25 season at 24-14-2. Saturday night was BU's 12th appearance in the National Championship game. The Terriers are now 5-7 in those games, and haven't won a title since 2009.
New York Times
08-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
How L.A. Kings goalie prospect Hampton Slukynsky led Western Michigan to its first Frozen Four
'The kid is almost make-believe as far as the quality of young man that he is.' That's what Western Michigan University Broncos head coach Pat Ferschweiler said when asked about his freshman goaltender shortly before the Frozen Four. It's the same place everyone starts when they talk about Hampton Slukynsky. Advertisement Brett Skinner, his old head coach with the USHL's Fargo Force, talks about him as driven, professional, competitive and nice and that he has 'great work habits on a daily basis.' According to Skinner, he puts in extra time in the gym and goes 'above and beyond a normal player.' Cary Eades, Fargo's general manager, says 'he's just flat out a winner' who is a 'great teammate,' an attribute Eades believes often gets overlooked with goaltenders. Where some goaltenders 'can turn their teammates off and get 96 or 97 percent from them,' Slukynsky, nicknamed Hammer by his, gets '100 percent plus' because of how well-liked and respected he is. Jay Hardwick, his old head coach at Warroad High School, says the kid that Ferschweiler, Skinner and Eades all describe hasn't changed over the years, either. He has treated hockey like he was a professional 'since he was real young,' according to Hardwick. Over time, it has paid off. Though he wasn't always viewed as a top prospect — he was drafted 128th in the ninth round of the 2022 USHL draft by the Force and 118th in the fourth round of the 2023 NHL Draft by the Kings — he has played his way into being one. It started on a backyard rink in the small but legendary northern Minnesota hockey town of Warroad, and it now looks destined to finish in Los Angeles. But first, he's got a couple of games to win in St. Louis and a first national championship to chase for the Broncos. There are only about 1,800 people who live in Warroad, which is just south of Minnesota's northern border with the Canadian province of Manitoba. Around town, everyone's got a backyard rink. Few have ever rivaled the one that Tim and Jenny Slukynsky built for their boys, though. It was the real deal, measuring 62 feet by 42 feet with full boards, lights, a small seating area, American and Canadian flags flapping in the wind and an old golf cart turned Zamboni. Growing up, there were times when the Slukynsky family home would run out of hot water for their showers because Tim needed to use it all to flood the ice. Advertisement In games of shinny on the backyard rink, Slukynsky would follow his brother Grant and his friends onto the ice. He became a goalie because they were three years older than he was and thus bigger and stronger than him, too. 'When all of his buddies were over, I wanted to play and be out there and the only way I could play where it was fair to both teams was to stick me in net,' Slukynsky said on a phone call last week, chuckling. 'That's how it started and I just fell in love with the position.' After years on the backyard rink, Slukynsky eventually graduated to the biggest thing in Warroad: Its legendary high school hockey team. 'Warroad is just a hockey town. It just is. That's what it was built on. A lot of their pride comes from their hockey and certainly their high school hockey program is as storied as any in Minnesota high school hockey history,' said Ferschweiler, a Minnesota native from about seven hours south of Warroad in Rochester. 'They've created some fantastic players up there. It's a lifestyle and all of Minnesota is but certainly in Warroad. They take it seriously and they've got a lot of numbers up there, but more than that, I think they do it right up there and are coached well from a young age as well.' At Warroad High, Hardwick said, 'it just kind of kept building every single year where (Slukynsky) just got better and better and people started to notice more and more.' After playing well in five games as a sophomore, he was invited to USA Hockey's U17 camp. After going 26-4-1 with a .925 save percentage as the team's starter in his junior year, the Force drafted him. That season, it was former Force goaltending coach Carter Krier (now an assistant at Ohio State) who saw him play and convinced Eades to select him. 'Krier would be someone who says he could see Sluky being where he's at,' Skinner said. 'It was projecting out high school hockey and you can go there and see the athleticism and stuff like that, but a lot of the times even the level of hockey might work against a goalie. Carter would deserve a ton of credit for it, but at the end of the day, you probably just get more lucky than anything. It's like drafting Pavel Datsyuk when the Red Wings did. It's like 'Well, if you were so good at it, then why don't you do it every year?' We're not picking off kids like Hampton in the draft all the time.' Advertisement Eades also knew Tim and Jenny since before they were even married because he coached in Warroad for 11 years from 1993 to 2004, so he knew about the backyard rink, about how hockey oriented they were and about both their sons (Grant also played in Fargo for a year). Instead of making the immediate jump to the USHL, Slukynsky returned for his senior year at Warroad High and led them to a 28-1-1 record with a .941 save percentage, playing well enough at the high school level and in spot starts with Team USA at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup and U18 Worlds, to convince the Kings to take a chance on him despite his relatively small sample of high-level hockey. Hardwick still remembers the practices from the last two of those three seasons playing for Warroad High. Warroad's team was strong, with would-be Lightning draft pick Jayson Shaugabay and a number of other college-bound players. And when they'd work on their power play, Slukynsky turned it into a competition, refusing to let them score and feel good about it. 'Hammer would make saves that goalies probably shouldn't make because he wanted to make our power play better,' Hardwick said. 'He just kind of raises the level of everyone because if you're not focused and you're not bearing down, he's not going to let you score. And he comes to the rink every day with that attitude and it just carries over into games.' He didn't jump right into college post-draft, either, instead finally joining the Force. In Fargo, Slukynsky started his only season in the USHL in a tandem with the more veteran Anton Castro. Though they split the starts, with Slukynsky playing 33 games and Castro playing 31, the Force were almost unbeatable with their rookie goalie in the net, going 28-3-0. Slukynsky finished the season with a .923 save percentage and, despite the tandem, won USHL Goaltender of the Year. 'He rises to challenges,' Eades said. 'He's very quietly confident and he's calm in the net. There's no wasted movements. It leaves the coach or the GM feeling good about him being in the net.' Advertisement In the playoffs, Skinner felt good enough to hand the net over to him, and Slukynsky led the Force to a Clark Cup title, going 9-3 with a .931 save percentage. 'The run that he went on in the playoffs for us speaks for itself. He's got ice in his veins,' Skinner said. 'He's a good-sized kid (he's now listed at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds), which gives him a chance, but he's also very athletic. He's positionally sound and has all of the fundamental tools of goaltending, but what separates him are his athleticism and his competitiveness as a goalie. The second-chance efforts and sometimes with him the third-chance efforts that he's able to come up with because of his athleticism and his competitiveness is really what makes him have the success that he does.' This season, as a freshman at WMU, he entered a similar situation to the one he walked into in Fargo a year ago. The Broncos were bringing back fifth-year Cameron Rowe, and Rowe started the first game of the season. After playing all season in a tandem, Slukynsky became Ferschweiler's guy for the playoffs and into the national tournament. (He also went 2-0 with a .933 save percentage for the gold medal-winning Team USA at the 2025 World Juniors in Ottawa, starting against Latvia in the round robin and Switzerland in the quarterfinals.) 'I'm comfortable with both of our goalies, but I'm certainly happy that we have one of them taking charge and commanding the net and that's Hampton,' Ferschweiler said. Entering the Frozen Four, he boasts an identical save percentage of .923 to the one he had in Fargo a year ago. He also stopped 28 of 29 shots in both of WMU's games at the Fargo regional, winning each 2-1 to lead the Broncos to their first-ever Frozen Four appearance. 'The thing that sticks out to me at all times — and it's just a feeling that you get right away — is that no moment is too big for Hampton Slukynsky,' Ferschweiler said. 'And his calm is exactly what you want from a great goaltender. Something goes by him, he doesn't change. He makes a great save, he doesn't change. A lot of that comes from his confidence in himself, but his confidence in himself comes from the preparation and the work that he puts in every single day. It's very impressive. He's got an extremely impressive approach to individual improvement.' When Slukynsky looks back on his journey from being shoved into the net in his backyard to playing at the Frozen Four for a national championship at just 19, he says he 'wouldn't trade it for anything.' Not the Warroad upbringing, with its backyard rinks and free ice time whenever one of the two local rinks was available. Advertisement 'It's a crazy hockey town up there,' he said, laughing again. 'That's kind of all you do from basically the time you can walk.' Not this year, which he called 'kind of crazy,' and everything that has come with it; coming into college and not knowing what to expect; the big step up from the USHL to the NCHC, which he calls 'one of the best conferences in college hockey every night;' the dream come true at the World Juniors; and now another chance at a dream come true in St. Louis. 'Every year I watched the Frozen Four on Thursday and Saturday in April,' Slukynsky said. 'Now I get to play in it.' This is also the first time that he's been able to play with his brother, who transferred to Western Michigan from Northern Michigan this year and is second on the team in scoring entering the Frozen Four. Because the freshmen at WMU don't stay in the dorms, he and Grant have lived together in a two-bedroom apartment on campus. Grant does most of the cooking, but Hampton insists they share the dishes, cleaning and garbage duties 'for the most part.' 'I'd say it's pretty even,' he argued. From afar now, Skinner says that Slukynsky 'has definitely, even since I had him, taken a lot of steps.' 'We were certainly lucky to have him last year, and it has been awesome to watch what he's doing now,' Skinner said. Hardwick says that what Slukynsky has done in Fargo and Kalamazoo in the two years since leaving Warroad doesn't surprise him. 'Being a high school kid from Minnesota, sometimes they worry, 'Well, how's he going to be at the next level?' and he has just proven people wrong at every level how elite of a goaltender he is,' Hardwick said. 'I don't think there's any doubt about it now.' On Thursday, he'll get another chance to prove there's no doubt when he takes the net against the reigning national champions from Denver — a team he beat in overtime in the NCHC final just a couple of weeks ago — at the Frozen Four. (Top photo courtesy of Western Michigan Athletics)
