Forward Shane Lachance (SHA’27).

Varsity Sports

BU Hockey Captain Shane Lachance Hails from BU Athletics Royalty and He’s Charting His Own Path

Grandson of legendary BU hockey coach Jack Parker is the program’s first sophomore captain and a team leader in points

Shane Lachance’s first memory with Boston University hockey was the 2009 national championship season. He was five-years old.

Lachance’s grandfather, Jack Parker, was the team’s head coach at the time. And the young boy sat in the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., watching the Terriers take on Ohio’s Miami University. It was the third period, and BU was losing 3-1.

“I’m sitting in the stands, like just crying. I’m a mess in the stands,” Lachance says. 

The Terriers would make a miraculous comeback, scoring two goals in the final minute of regulation to send the game to overtime. And after BU won, clinching its fifth national championship, he remembers celebrating with the team and his grandpa. A young Lachance even stands with his brothers in the team’s celebration photo.

“I’m like the happiest guy in the rink,” he says.

Now he’s ready to leave his own mark on the program.

Shane Lachance (SHA’27) is a third-generation Boston University men’s hockey player. Parker (Questrom’68, Hon.’97) was team captain and is renowned for his 40 years as head coach of the Terriers, and Shane’s father, Scott Lachance (Parker’s son-in-law), played a season for BU before enjoying a 13-year NHL career.

However, Shane Lachance is determined to blaze his own trail in the scarlet and white. The forward was named the first sophomore captain in BU history and currently ranks third on the team in points.

“I’ve had multiple people in my family come through here and be very successful here, and it’s important to continue on that legacy,” Lachance says. “But I’m here for my own legacy, as well, and I want people to remember me at BU because of what I did at BU, not because of my family.”

He first started skating when he was two or three years old on his backyard ice rink. He hated it—his skates hurt his feet and he often fought to go out in his sneakers. With time, the skates hurt less, and following in the footsteps of his older brother Jake, he fell in love with hockey.

The Lachance brothers were surrounded by hockey growing up, whether it was hanging around the BU locker room at Agganis Arena or following their father’s NHL career. 

“You really get to be a good hockey player when you watch other people play and see how it’s done,” Parker says. “They were real students of the game.”

On the first day schools could offer players a chance to commit, Lachance received a call from Albie O’Connell (CAS’99), then BU’s head coach, with an offer to play. 

“[O’Connell] said, ‘I don’t need an answer right away,’” Lachance says. “I think I called him back eight minutes later just to tell him that it’s a done deal.”

Before BU, he played for two years for the Youngstown Phantoms in the United States Hockey League, USA Hockey’s top junior hockey league. Lachance admits there were some “ups and downs” in his first season, but says he leveled up the following year. He served as captain of Youngstown and recorded the second-most points on the team, with 33 goals and 21 assists. The team also ended the season as champions, winning the Clark Cup.

Forward Brandon Svoboda (SHA’28), who also played on that Youngstown team, says Lachance’s leadership was crucial to the team’s success. “He’s the best leader I’ve ever had on a team, both in Youngstown and here,” Svoboda says. “He takes care of us more than he does himself, and it shows day in and day out with the way he goes about on the ice.”

In fall 2023, Lachance finally made his way to Comm Ave as a player. Parker attends most of the team’s home games and says his favorite part has been watching his grandson grow as a player and in confidence. But Shane’s family never inflicted any pressure to live up to a legacy. 

“Once I got here, I realized I was good enough to be here,” Lachance says. “My family knows that it’s stressful sometimes, so they do a great job of not adding to that pressure. They’re just sitting back and enjoying it.”

He says the most difficult part of his freshman year was finding his place on the team. “It was staying confident and knowing that you’re good enough to play with these players, and if you’re given a chance to play with them, then you better not mess that up,” he says.

In the second half of the season, he played on a line with fellow freshmen Jack Harvey (CAS’27) and Macklin Celebrini (CAS’27). The three took off and found their place at the top of the line chart. Lachance ended the season with 13 goals and 14 assists. However, the season ended in heartbreak for the Terriers, as they reached the Frozen Four before falling 2-1 in overtime to Denver.

“I was thinking, personally, I wish I did one thing more. I wish I did a little extra,” Lachance says. “I’ll always remember that feeling, and that motivated me this summer to not take any days off.”

That may be one reason he was voted team captain—the first sophomore captain in program history. 

“It’s quite a feather in his cap to have [the ‘C’] on his shirt as a sophomore,” says Parker, who was BU’s captain on the 1967-68 team. “These other 20 guys in the dressing room were saying we’d like to rally around this guy, he’s the guy we’d like to follow. That says something about anybody who’s captain.”

Working alongside fellow captain Ryan Greene (COM’26) and head coach Jay Pandolfo (CAS’96), Lachance has had a lot on his plate this season with an up-and-down first half and a young team still figuring out its identity.

“It’s hard to hold people accountable when your side of the street’s not clean,” he says. “The first thing for me is always leading by example and going out there and being the best that I can be.”

Lachance has stepped up in a big way this season on a team that lost last season’s top-two point leaders. He came up clutch on multiple occasions: first with a huge game-tying goal in the final 21 seconds at Maine and then the game-winner against Notre Dame to win the Friendship Four tournament.

“He’s the guy that you always think is going to get it done no matter what,” Svoboda says. “He’s a big-time player in big-time games.”

The Edmonton Oilers drafted Lachance in the sixth round of the 2021 draft, when he was still in high school. But he had other priorities in mind at the time. Now he doesn’t want to leave a BU legacy as Jack Parker’s grandson or Scott Lachance’s son, but rather as Shane Lachance.

“When I want people to think of me here at BU, I want them to think, ‘He was a great teammate,’” he says. “Not how many goals he scored, not how many assists he had, but this guy was fun to hang around in the rink, he was always pushing guys, he was working hard, and just being a good person.”