Boston College Men's Hockey Completes Weekend Sweep of UMass Lowell

Boston College Hockey continued its strong start with a weekend sweep of the UMass-Lowell River Hawks.

[Side note, what is a River Hawk? Has anyone actually ever seen a River Hawk? Seems like kind of a random obscure school mascot. But I digress].

On Friday, the Eagles traveled to the lovely city of Lowell where Boston College won 4-2 in front of a crowd of 5,162 fans. BC started off slow but the Riverhawks were not able to take advantage of it, and after one period it remained scoreless. The second period was a different story as BC exploded for two goals within a minute of each other.

Capital Paul Carey scored first, while junior Steven Whitney knocked in his 50th career goal a little over a minute later. The River Hawks came back with consecutive goals from Michael Budd and Matt Ferreira. Freshman Johnny Gaudreau scored the decisive goal 34 seconds later, completely taking the wind out of the sails of the Riverhawks and their fans. Barry Almeida hit an empty netter to secure the win for the Eagles.

On Saturday BC returned home to Conte Forum where they surged early and controlled the game right from the get go. Destry Straight started the game off with a goal, assisted by Barry Almeida, and was followed by a goal by Johnny Gaudreau. UML cut the score in half when Scott Wilson knocked in a rebound past Parker Milner.

BC didn't take long to answer as Pat Mullane hit Steven Whitney for a perfect back door pass to put BC up 3-1. The Eagles' put the nail in the coffin when Kevin Hayes hit a streaking Chris Kreider to put BC up by 3. Kreider scored again in the 2nd, notching a PP goal. Kreider's huge game continued when he hit Bill Arnold to put BC up 6-1. UMass Lowell hit two goals in garbage time, but it was too little too late.

Jerry York like any good coach, still sees room for improvement:

"Our club's off to an excellent start,'' he said. "But there's still a lot of improvement we expect to make in a wide variety of areas. We accept the fact we've had a good start but we've got to push forward and just get better as a club.''

These were two games BC was expected to win, and Jerry York is not a team that loses many games against teams they should beat. BC is now 7-1 and a mind blowing 5-0 in the Hockey East. BC's schedule continues next Friday with a home game against Maine, and will be heading to Amherst to battle UMass on Saturday.