Boston College Men’s Hockey vs. New Brunswick: Final Thoughts and Predictions

Hey guys.

IT IS HOCKEY SEASON!

After a long summer that started after the Eagles failed to make the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row, men’s hockey returns to the Heights with the Eagles’ exhibition game against New Brunswick.

Here’s what you should keep an eye on:

1. MEET THE NEW BOSS: Oliver Wahlstrom is a player that BC fans will hear mentioned a lot this season, and for good reason. The New York Islanders’ 11th overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft comes in with high expectations. A winger with strong playmaking abilities, Wahlstrom has the potential to be one of college hockey’s best players, and can lead the Eagles to the show for the first time. That is, of course, if he lives up to the hype. We’ll see him play with the team for the first time Friday.
2. SAME AS THE OLD BOSS: Save for Kevin Lohan, the Eagles return all of their players from last season. This is the season where the long rebuild might come to a head: key players like Michael Kim, JD Dudek, Casey Fitzgerald and others are at at the latter point of their careers. This could be a breakout year for those players, so keep an eye on that.
3. STRONG AS A BRICK WOLL: Look, no one has to remind anyone of Joseph Woll’s abilities in net: he was just named to a Mike Richter Award watch list. But he’s going to need to be strong in net to propel the Eagles to success.
4. BONUS: TAKE ALL THE PENALTY MINUTES: New Brunswick is the annual CIS game, and if previous CIS games across the nation are any indication, that means a whole lot of penalty minutes and hockey that is less than good. The moment the NCAA allows for more flexibility in scheduling (more to the point, who teams can schedule) the better off everyone is going to be.

Random, Possibly Incorrect Fact from UNB’s Wikipedia Page

UNB has a club football team, which is not the worst collegiate football program associated with a town called New Brunswick.

RUTGERS BURN. (air horn sound effect)

BEER OF THE GAME:

Molson Canadian

Look. Molson is not the best beer you can get. In fact it is a beer that you will only get if there is literally no other beer available and you haven’t seen or had beer in a while and you just really need a beer because it is BEER DRINKIN’ SEASON DAGGUMIT so you settle for Molson with the expectation that there are going to be better, more relevant beers that will be available in the next few weeks.

Basically Molson is the CIS exhibition game of beers.

PREDICTIONS:

Look no one really knows much about the talent level of Canadian teams relative to US Collegiate teams, so we’re going to really going to be uninformedly creating predictions on this one.

Well, more than usual anyway.

Arthur: 5-1 Birds

Grant: 5-3 BC. There will be 85 total PIMs.

Laura: 5-3 BC

Steven: 3-2 BC

Enjoy the games everyone. Happy hockey season.