The Boston College men’s hockey team defeated the University of New Brunswick by a score of 4-2 in today’s exhibition game. The Eagles took a while to warm up in the match, but played a solid game of hockey once they broke through with their first goal.
New Brunswick scored the first goal of the game with 6 minutes to go in the first period after dominating in shots on goal, but senior captain David Cotton tied things up minutes later, tipping a Connor Moore shot into the net. Jack McBain picked up his first of the season with under a minute to go in the first, and the Eagles wouldn’t give up the lead for the rest of the match.
BC’s final two goals both came from freshmen - Matt Boldy scored a beauty in the second to give the Eagles a 3-1 lead, and Mike Hardman was responsible for the final BC goal. The Varsity Reds scored once in the third period for a final score of 4-2 in favor of the Eagles.
Obviously an exhibition game can’t give us a perfect sense of what this team will look like for the 2019-20 season, but here are some major takeaways:
The Good
- Freshman goaltender Spencer Knight is very good. This is no surprise considering he has been touted as a once in a lifetime goalie, but Knight, who made 20 saves tonight, looked completely confident in the net. Particularly promising was the fact that giving up the first goal did not seem to rattle him at all - a goalie who doesn’t get frazzled when he lets in a goal and his team is behind is a huge asset.
- Backup goalie Jack Moffatt held his own. Moffatt played in the third period, and despite clearly being more nervous than Knight was, he played well and came up with some big saves. Moffatt only allowed 1 goal on 16 SOG. We already know Ryan Edquist is a solid goaltender, so this means we have one phenomenal starting goalie and two really solid backups.
- David Cotton, Logan Hutsko, and Julius Mattila continue to mesh really well together and make for a strong first line.
- This team has some scoring depth - every BC goal came from a different line. The Eagles will be a much harder team to beat if opponents can’t rely on just shutting down Mattila/Cotton/Hutsko.
- The freshmen skaters look good and seemed pretty confident. A few standouts: Matt Boldy is fun to watch and is going to make some big plays this year, Drew Helleson appears to be a strong defensive defender who really didn’t make any visible mistakes today, Marshall Warren is willing to take chances, and Alex Newhook is very fast.
The Not-So-Good
- The Eagles still cannot catch a break on penalties. The Eagles spent more time on the penalty kill the New Brunswick did, and that is going to come back to haunt them as they start playing top NCAA teams.
- It took the Eagles a while to get warmed up. BC was way behind UNB in SOG for much of the first period until Cotton scored the first BC goal and the Eagles broke through. BC needs to be confident enough to be taking chances on net before they score their first goal each game.
- Defensive turnovers have been a huge problem in recent seasons, and there were some pretty bad turnovers by BC defensemen is dangerous areas tonight. This is one that I think all fans are really ready to see some improvement on ASAP, because it isn’t a new problem and it is a coachable problem.
Overall, this was a good game from BC and fans should be cautiously optimistic for the coming season!