COLLEGE

Donaldson: PC's Gillies feels for Boston University goalie O'Connor

Jim Donaldson
The Providence Journal
Jon Gillies raises the championship trophy to fans as they celebrate their 4-3 victory over Boston University in the NCAA men's Frozen Four hockey championship game.

PROVIDENCE — There are two ways to win lasting fame in sports.

The best one is to do something great, something memorable, in a big game.

Like Providence College goaltender Jon Gillies did Saturday night, when he made 49 saves — highlighted by a spectacular, sprawling-across-the-goal-mouth, incredibly clutch one in the final minute — in backstopping the Friars to the NCAA hockey championship, beating Boston University, 4-3.

The other way, the worst way, is to do something awful, something people never will forget, in a big game.

Like BU goaltender Matt O’Connor did Saturday night, when he caught a high, easy shot flipped in from center ice by PC defenseman Tom Parisi, only to let it slip out of his glove and fall behind him, where — not knowing where it was — he backed into the puck, pushing it into the net for the game-tying goal with 8:36 remaining.

In that moment, O’Connor became to BU hockey history what Bill Buckner, with his unforgettable error in Game Six of the ’86 World Series, is to Red Sox history.

“That changed the momentum. You could feel it,” PC coach Nate Leaman said on as sunny a Sunday morning as you’ll ever see in Friartown.

Which now is Titletown.

The PC team bus, having had a state police escort all the way from Boston, had just pulled in, horn honking happily, behind Schneider Arena, the home of the 2015 NCAA champions.

At the Huxley Avenue gate on the PC campus was a large sign, proclaiming: “PC Friars — On Top of the Hockey World!”

What put them there was an unstoppable wrist shot by Brandon Tanev with 6:37 left in the game, cleanly beating O’Connor, who has to be feeling as low as an athlete can feel after his memorable miscue.

“He deserves better than that,” Gillies said after getting off the Friars bus. “He’s an unbelievable goalie, an unbelievable person. I definitely feel for him.

“But,” Gillies added with a smile, “it also feels good to be national champions!”

No one better understands how O’Connor must feel than other goalies. Ross Brooks, the rink manager at Schneider, spent four years as a backup netminder for the Boston Bruins and many years in the American Hockey League, including seven with the Providence Reds.

“That poor kid,” he said of O’Connor. “Any of us who has played the game has been there. It’s a shame that happened to him on a stage like that.

“But I didn’t think he looked that sharp the whole evening. I thought he was fighting the puck. On [Parisi’s] goal, he seemed to be nonchalant about it. On a puck like that, that’s going over the net, you usually let it go. When he brought it down, he thought he had it. Then he didn’t.”

For a split-second in the final minute, it looked as if the Terriers were going to tie the score, with the puck in front of the net and the whole left side gaping open as a BU player swiped it toward the goal mouth. But Gillies stretched his arm across the crease just in time to make the save that saved the national championship.

“At that point,” Gillies said, “I was just diving to get something in front of the puck. I couldn’t let the game go into overtime.”

With that save, the Friars went into the history books.

“The last minute of the game is when you want your goaltender to stand tall,” Brooks said. “Jon stood up even taller than he is.”

Gillies is a rangy, 6-foot-5, junior. Voted second-team, all-American — anyone who watched the Friars this season felt he should have been a first-team selection — Gillies has been drafted by the Calgary Flames and likely will be playing professionally next season.

“The team has so much confidence in him,” Brooks said. “They know he’s going to be there for them. He was 8-feet tall in that last minute.”

The big guy thrives on big games.

“You’ve got to have fun with it,” Gillies said. “You don’t change the way you play. You prepare the same way. You do the same things that have made you successful. If you overemphasize the importance of the game, that’s when you run into trouble.”

Leaman thinks it’s all but impossible to overemphasize Gillies’ role in PC’s first NCAA hockey title.

“I sat down with him at Christmastime and told him the rest of the season was going to be all about him,” Leaman said on Sunday. “I told him he had to put the team on his back.

“He was our best player. We needed him to be our best player in the big games. Against Omaha [a 4-1 victory in the semifinals] we didn’t need him to be great. Against BU, we did. And he was.

“He’s a big reason why we won the game. I think he’s the best goalie in the country. He showed that (Saturday) night.”

It was a game that Gillies always will remember, but also a game that O’Connor will spend the rest of his life trying to forget.