Boston College 4, Mercyhurst 1: Eagles Take Home Trophy #1 Of 4

Dartmouth Tourney Champs. The Eagles rang in the New Year with a 4-1 victory over Mercyhurst to win the 2010 Ledyard National Bank Classic. Brian Gibbons scored twice, Kevin Hayes scored on the power play, and Barry Almeida added an empty-netter with 14.4 seconds remaining to seal the victory.

Muse made 30 saves on the night to improve to 12-3-0.

Gibbons extends his scoring streak to nine games (6 goals, 10 assists), while Atkinson extends his streak to seven games (7 goals, 7 assists).

BC resumes Hockey East play this weekend with a home-and-home with Providence. The Friday night home game will air of NESN (7:30 PM).

World Juniors. If not for love of country, this sentence would be all sorts of wrong.

"Boston College's Chris Kreider scored off a feed from Boston University's Charlie Coyle to help the U.S. rebound from an early 1-0 deficit and defeat Switzerland 2-1 to win Pool A at the IIHF World Junior Championships and earn a bye into Monday's semifinals."

The US survives Switzerland and advances to the World Juniors semifinals (Monday night, 7:30 PM). The Americans will face the winner of today's quarterfinal between Canada and Switzerland.

BU's Charlie Coyle has had an outstanding tournament, leading all Team USA scorers with 2 goals and 4 assists through four games. Let's hope Coyle doesn't pull a Kreider and parlay a strong World Juniors performance into a red-hot second half of the season. 

For BC, Kreider has been the US's second leading scorer, registering four points (2-2-4) through four games. Brian Dumoulin has an assist and is +3 through four games, while Patrick Wey is -2.

U-S-A! U-S-A!