BC Women’s Hockey Swept By Northeastern, But Eagles Find Reason For Optimism

Boston College Women’s Hockey had a disappointing weekend — let’s just say it right off the bat. You don’t get swept and shutout over two games and come away feeling “good,” by any means. But the Eagles showed some real improvement as the weekend went on, and with lowly New Hampshire on deck next weekend, BC at least came out of the weekend feeling like the losing streak won’t continue for much longer.

Game one at Matthews Arena was definitely the lesser of the two games for the Eagles, but they at least started strong. The Eagles didn’t give up a shot to the Huskies until the game was six and a half minutes in, though things went sharply downhill from there. A pair of goals in each of the final two periods gave Northeastern a 4-0 win, and the 43-15 Husky shot advantage was definitely along the lines of what we might have expected.

Game two, though, was like watching a different BC team entirely. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Boston College might have looked the better team through two full periods of play, and in fact the Eagles — incredibly — were actually up 16-15 in shots at the time. Boston College had several real Grade-A chances, including one that poor Abby Newhook will probably be kicking herself about for a while where she cleared the crossbar on a shot with a gaping empty net in front of her late in the second period.

The Huskies took the lead going into the second intermission on an unfortunate play where Alina Mueller directed the puck into the net behind Abbey Levy with her glove. The play was called no goal on the ice, but replay saw the Hockey East officials overturn the call and award the Huskies with the first goal of the contest. It was a disappointing way to go behind given how well the Eagles had been playing.

The third period saw Northeastern start to take a little more control thanks to the Eagles having to kill three consecutive penalties, but BC was still in it until about five minutes to play when NU’s Katy Knoll scored a great goal to ice the game at 2-0, which would be your final.

If these two games had been flipped, you’d be a lot more worried going forward... but that was a really well-played and hard-fought game for BC in the second contest. If someone had told you that the Eagles would have been outshooting Northeastern after 40 minutes of any game this year you would have assumed you were talking to a crazy person, but it was really a strong effort. That, combined with the Eagles getting Caroline Goffredo back from injury this weekend and hopefully another player or two in the coming weeks could be the start of a stronger stretch of play going forward.

Next up for Boston College is a home and home series with New Hampshire. The Wildcats are having a pretty tough go of it (again) this season and are sitting right around Boston University in the rankings, who the Eagles just handled pretty convincingly a couple weeks back. We’ll see in a few days whether BC can not just get off the losing streak, but start to put together some comprehensive wins as we approach the winter break.