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So much win.
BC just annihilated Northeastern tonight. A curb-stomping if there ever was one. Our Eagles scored a touchdown to defeat Northeastern 7-1, earning a spot in the Beanpot Championship against -- who else? -- Boston University.
Forgive me if this post makes little to no sense, as I just drove 5 hours round-trip to watch 3 hours of hockey, was up late watching my Giants win the Super Bowl last night (yeahhh, buddy!) and it's something like 4 hours past my bedtime (I know, I'm getting old, whatever). But how could I not spend a few minutes to gush about this game?
The effort was tremendous. Just tremendous. BC was winning pucks on the boards like it was going out of style. The transition game -- a cornerstone of the Jerry York Offense™ -- that had been missing for months showed up to the party in a big, big way. I lost track of how many of our goals game on the transition.
Just how awesome was the offense in this one? Chris Kreider was held scoreless. The guy who is going to wave "Hello! Goodbye!" at the XL Center in Hartford while driving by it on his way to MSG, because he won't even touch the ice in an AHL game. That guy. Boston College scored 7 goals, and Kreider wasn't involved in any of them. Not to say he didn't show up -- he was all over the place -- but the rest of the offense, particularly by way of Messrs. Whitney and Gaudreau, with two goals apiece, picked up the slack.
BC scored shorthanded... twice! BC scored on the power play... twice!!(WAT I DON'T EVEN)!! BC outshot the Huskies 2:1, putting a straight-pimpin' 46 shots on net. Milner was sparkling and is quickly playing himself back into the number 1 goalie slot (as high as I am on Billet, how do you not keep putting Milner in there at this point?). We had a monster student section... again. 4 and a half sections; as big as Northeastern's. We used our super-awesome, drool-worthy alternate jerseys. I'm glad I wasn't playing the drinking game from home because I'm sure many of you will be hungover from all of NESN's shots of a straight-up dapper looking Jerry York. Etc, etc. That's how good a night it was.
The highlight(s) of the night, at least for me, came down to two finalists:
1) Our 5th goal, which, as @joegrav so aptly put it, was pretty much the hockey equivalent of Rawlings getting dunked on:
2) Northeastern's fans toward the end of the game. My fan-crush on Northeastern is pretty well documented, but how can you not respect, or at least have a hearty chuckle at, the originality and wittiness of their student section? At the end of the game, when the game was far out of reach, BC fans taunted with "What's the matter with NU? NU sucks!" to which Northeastern responded with "What's the matter with the Beanpot? The Beanpot sucks!" Those poor guys have had a rough go of it. Even their women's team hasn't won a Beanpot since 1998. My personal favorite, however, was when BC fans started chanting "We want BU!" and Northeastern responded with "We want Harvard!"
Seriously, how can you not tip your cap?
In any case... I'm going to sleep. But not before I feed you all some delicious, delicious highlights!
Also, just for kicks I took a video of BC's fight song + goal chant. The fight song isn't that audible, but nonetheless, you can get a good idea how big our student section was.
Before we can get super excited for the Beanpot Championship, we have the small matter of knocking off a very, very weak Vermont team on the road. Can't overlook this game. A loss would be devastating to our PWR standings. We're currently 6th, though 4th in RPI (we're losing two random comparisons to Ferris State and Minnesota-Duluth). We're a mere .0009 RPI points away from being 2nd, which is almost close enough to be a virtual tie. BU in first place (I know, right??) is not much farther ahead. Beating Vermont and winning the Beanpot could, in theory, vault us all the way to 1st place in the PWR. Not definitely, but possibly.
And right on schedule. Starting next Monday, it's trophy season.