BU Hockey Hands BC Its Third Loss Of The Season ... And It Was Pretty Lame, Thank You Very Much

Well that went about as badly as it possibly could have gone, didn't it? This game was a disaster from the get-go, and the frustration didn't let up for 60 minutes. BC fell to BU in hockey for the first time since January 2010. While it was bound to happen eventually, it doesn't make it any less lame.

This one had just about everything go wrong that could go wrong. It didn't help that Boston College played as un-Boston College of a game as they possibly could have. It was like the teams traded jerseys before the game. BU's special teams excelled, including scoring a shorthanded goal - usually our trademark.

Because I'm a nice guy, game highlights will come after the jump, so you aren't even going to be forced to look at it. I would avoid watching unless you're a masochist or you got rejected from BC.

Where in the world do you start? Let's just rattle off some of the billion awful things about this game:

1) The players didn't skate.
2) We were out-muscled constantly.
3) Other than a few big hits early, BU played a physical game that we did not match.
4) We lost battles for the puck.
5) We made the extra unnecessary pass whenever it was physically possible for one to be attempted. At one point we came in on a three on one, made a perfect pass to set up a shot on an open net, and inexplicably passed it back across the freaking slot where it was deflected away to the back boards.
6) We couldn't keep possession on any of our 753 power plays (approximate).
7) While we won the faceoff battle 30-23, we lost over and over again on big draws on power plays that resulted in us losing valuable possession time, which we had a hard enough time keeping as it was (see #6).
8) We had terrible, sloppy passes for the entire game. The *entire* game. It was like watching Shinskie (Side note: Did you know he used to play minor league baseball? No one ever mentions that.) play hockey.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. BC struggled in the neutral zone more than I've seen them in years, which was one of the root causes of their problems.

Parker Milner looked like Brett Bennett. Maybe he let the big time publicity he got for his stellar play early in the season get to his head. But this was *not* a goaltender loss. If ever there was a team loss, this is it. When BC needed a player to step up and put the team on its back, no one stepped forward. The closest anyone came was Gaudreau, who set up some sensational feeds from behind the net, as is becoming his specialty.

The game started off bad and just got worse. BU scored just a minute in, and the great unwashed had a party for the next 59 minutes. It seemed that whenever BC would have a chance and not cash in, BU would come down and take advantage with a goal. The worst of all was when BC came in on the aforementioned 3-on-1 only to produce a dramatic fail. BU came down and scored almost immediately to go up by 4 goals and really make the game seem out of reach. 

Very late in the third, while BC was trying to at least not get shut out, BU scored a shorthanded goal to go up 5-0. It was the kind of kick in the proverbial junk that could only come in a game like this one.

The climactic facepalm moment came with just 5 seconds left in the game when the refs blew dead a puck that was still loose in Millan's crease. Well after the whistle - a literal one to two seconds after the whistle - Kreider, who, like everyone else in the arena, knew the play was blown dead, pulled the puck off the crease and fired into the net. Somehow (and again, it was perfectly clear that the play had been blown dead to just about anyone as far away as the opposite blue line who had been paying attention) the goal light lit, the horn sounded, the lights dimmed, and the poor BC pep band located on the opposite end of the ice who couldn't see what happened and only half believed the goal was scored fired up a half-hearted "For Boston." One great, big facepalm.

Despite the awful outcome, we can thank the sweet baby Jesus that, at the very least, BU's students are the biggest tools on the planet, and no matter what happens on the ice, we will still have them to laugh at. Credit to them for going old-school, whipping out such classics as "Not In Boston" and "Sunday School" on a regular basis, but as a reminder to those who got the thin envelope from BC,

1) Conte Forum is, in fact, in Boston
2) Chestnut Hill is way, way, way, WAY nicer than the hard hat area you call a campus anyway, and we are quite proud of it, and
3) Yes, Sunday school is a thing that exists, and it is associated with religious education, but as far as I know, it doesn't have any negative connotations... You might as well chant "First Letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians," we would be just as offended.

BC has two straight weekends featuring a single game, but both are tough contests. We face #7 Notre Dame next weekend, followed by #14 Yale on Black Friday, both on the road. Huge pairwise implications for these games, so BC needs to come out flying. We then get a home and home against the rat dogs, with a chance to prove once more that they are our inferiors.