Boston College Men’s Hockey Weekend Thoughts

The Boston College men’s hockey team wrapped up another weekend of conference play with two games against Maine, the team currently at the bottom of Hockey East. The Eagles continued with their struggles to put together a complete weekend when they dropped Friday’s game after winning on Thursday night. We’ll hit pause on Hockey East play for a bit, as BC won’t play another conference game until December 10, but before we start looking ahead to that, here’s a last look at the weekend against Maine.

ANOTHER MISSED CHANCE AT A SWEEP

This is starting to feel like a scheduled segment, but BC once again had a chance to walk away with a weekend sweep but ended up settling for a split. The Eagles took care of business fairly easily with a 6-2 win on Thursday before dropping a shootout to Maine on Friday night. Maine came into the weekend struggling quite a bit, so it’s disappointing that this wasn’t finally the time that BC broke through and took both games in a weekend series.

BC has now dropped points to Vermont, Merrimack, and Maine on the season, teams that are a combined 5-16-2 in Hockey East play so far. The schedule certainly doesn’t get any easier when conference play resumes, and there’s definitely a chance that those dropped points will be important towards the end of the season when we start looking at the Hockey East standings a bit more closely. The Eagles are currently in a tie for third place in the conference, but it’s a pretty crowded field and a few teams have games in hand. It’s still probably too soon to look at this too closely, but remember these dropped points against teams near the bottom of the conference in the coming months.

JACK St. IVANY’S BIG SEASON CONTINUES

I’ll be honest, if you asked me a few months ago, I wouldn’t have expected Jack St. Ivany to be tied for second on the team in points through 14 games. He had just six points in 18 games as a junior last season despite consistent time on the power play, but this season has been a different story. He’s just under a point-per-game pace so far, with two goals and 11 assists through 14 games and he’s looked better in just about every area of his game so far.

St. Ivany had two assists in Thursday night’s win, already his third multi-point game of the season and added his second goal of the season early on Friday night. BC badly needed a defensemen behind Marshall Warren and Drew Helleson to step up this season, and so far, St. Ivany has been exactly that for them. It’s probably not fair to expect him to continue with this scoring pace - he was around half a point per game at Yale before transferring last year - but it’s been a great start and he’s well on his way to topping his career high of 16 points.

THIRD LINE CHIPS IN ON THURSDAY

After the top two lines spent much of the early part of the season carrying BC’s offense, it was nice to see the third line of Mike Posma, Colby Ambrosio, and Casey Carreau starting to click a little bit on Thursday night. The trio has only been together for a few games, but they connected for two goals in the series opener and had some nice moments in all three zones. Carreau’s goal - his first of the season - in particular came off of a very nice passing play that set the senior winger up with a mostly open net to shoot at while Posma’s goal came after a great individual effort from Ambrosio when he drove to the net and created a rebound in close for his linemate to bury.

It was a nice game from the third line, and the kind of performance that we’ll hopefully see more of going forward. We probably shouldn’t expect two goals per game from them, but they’ve got enough skill that they should be able to contribute pretty regularly. It would be nice to have another line that can put up some goals if the top six doesn’t quite have their A-game on a certain night, and Thursday was an encouraging sign on that front. Hopefully we’ll get to see these three continue to develop some chemistry as the season continues.

EAMON POWELL, SHOOTOUT SPECIALIST?

Speaking of things that I wouldn’t have predicted, Eamon Powell got the nod as the first shooter in Friday night’s shootout loss to Maine. Powell made it look pretty easy too, scoring with a smooth shot through the five-hole.

Powell is now two-for-two on shootout attempts this season, with his first coming way back in the season opener against Quinnipiac. It’s a nice little skill of his that I wasn’t really aware of before this season, but he’s certainly earned his spot in that lineup. I always like when defensemen are good at these kind of things, so good on him for coming through in these situations.