PROVIDENCE — The Friars will be in Boston for the Final Four, which in itself marks the end of a long road back. They last made it to college hockey’s biggest dance in 1985, when Chris Terreri was the their star goalie and some unknown kid named Adam Oates from RPI helped dash their dream of an NCAA championship.
“It’s a great moment for our program,” said coach Nate Leaman, moments after his Friars erased Denver, 4-1, here Sunday to capture the East Regional championship. “But the job’s not done. We move on to Boston. These are the great moments we want our program in . . . but the job’s not done.”
Three decades gone by. Thirty years and waiting. While so much of New England college hockey has focused on the success of the likes of Boston University and Boston College, the Friars have plugged along, ever earnest, most always respectable, but never quite championship stuff.
But now here they are, two victories, perhaps only 120 minutes, from bringing home a national title to a state that has long embraced hockey (homage here to the beloved and legendary Rhode Island Reds). They will play in the Frozen Four’s first game on April 9 at TD Garden, against an opponent (Nebraska-Omaha) that still hadn’t been determined Sunday night when they the sashayed out of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.
All they knew as the night ended, with “Dirty Water” blaring on the Dunk’s PA, was that they were headed to the banks of the River Charles.
“I can tell you, I didn’t know the game, I didn’t play hockey until I was 14,” said Leaman, asked what he was doing in 1985, when he was a 12-year-old living in Ohio and the Friars were losing to RPI in the title game in Detroit. “Hockey really wasn’t big there.”
As Leaman spoke in the postgame news conference, his son Ty, only 5 years old, fidgeted at his side. He cupped a hand and whispered into his dad’s ear, noting that he should remind one and all that, hey, the Friars won.
The little boy fussed with a bottle of water, squirmed in his seat near the podium. The press corps laughed. His dad laughed.
“I was playing with a green cap,” his dad told the media, picking up his son’s cue, thinking back those 30 years to home in Ohio. “And playing with a bottle of water.”
The Friars might have all gone home to play with only toys and disappointment had they not been able to survive a rather lethargic first period. Denver, coached by ex-Maine star Jim Montgomery, carried play, looking capable of knocking the Friars out of the tourney before the local TV stations began to roll the 6 p.m. news.
But Providence survived the first, began to gain traction early in the second, and moved to a 1-0 lead with 5:38 left in the second when Noel Acciari collected a pass off the right-wing half-wall from Shane Luke and jammed in a backhander from his perch off the right post. The Friars never trailed.
However, it was anything but a coast to victory. Denver knotted it as the midpoint of the third period approached. Joey LaLeggia knocked in the equalizer on a power play, finally nudging the puck over the line amid a mosh pit of players in goalie Jon Gillies’s crease.
The crowd of 6,326, most of them Friars fans, might have been hoping they had refundable bus and train tickets to the Hub of Hockey. Denver had momentum, still looked faster and lighter, and the Friars were skating with the burden of having been erased by Union last year in the regional finals.
Causeway Street suddenly looked a very long way away.
But less than three minutes after LaLeggia provided Denver the big lift, he provided a far more damaging drop. Moving up into the neutral zone, he clocked Friars forward Steven McParland, a shot to the head that left McParland sprawled in the neutral zone.
The hit to the head, policed more diligently in the college game than in the NHL, earned LaLeggia a ticket the dressing room (a five-minute major for targeting the head for a hit, and an automatic game misconduct).
In his glory days as a Black Bear, Montgomery played under different rules. If a player wasn’t looking, as was the case with McParland, he suffered the consequences of such wallops. But the onus has since transferred from the victim to the perpetrator. Montgomery didn’t like it, but he understood it.
“LaLeggia did everything [on that play] that I’ve asked of him,” said Montgomery, who wants his players to check opposing puck carriers aggressively. “Unfortunately, there was head contact.”
The Friars, their game sharp only in spurts, were futile for much of the power play. In fact, had it not been for a post, Evan Janssen’s wrister at 14:30 would have moved Denver out front, 2-1, on a shorthanded strike. After that close brush, Leaman called time out.
“He told us to relax,” said Acciari. “He wanted us to get it in, get it up in the zone, and execute.”
And finally, with 5:01 left in regulation, Tom Parisi nailed home a wrister, closing to the inner edge of the left-wing circle from his point position and beating Tanner Jaillet to the stick side. The Friars closed it out with two empty-netters (Brandon Tanev and Kevin Rooney).
Boston awaited, home of lovers, muggers, and thieves.
“You try to get better one week at a time,” said Leaman, a former Harvard assistant coach who is now in his fourth season behind the Friars’ bench. “And you try to recruit good players. You don’t win at this level without good players.”
If they can survive two more games, the 2014-15 Friars will be remembered not just as good players, but as the best in the nation.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeKPD.