BC Women’s Hockey vs. New Hampshire: Final Thoughts & Predictions

It seems to have happened pretty quickly, but Boston College Women’s Hockey is on a pretty lengthy losing streak all of a sudden. The Eagles have lost 4 in a row and 5 of their last 6, and while a lot of that is due to the fact that the Eagles just faced their toughest opponent of the season and got shut out twice, it’s mostly because the offense is on a brutal scoring drought. BC hasn’t scored a goal in 148 minutes of game time and has just one in their last 240 minutes. That is most definitely not going to cut it.

The good news? The Eagles get a much easier opponent in the UNH Wildcats this weekend to try to right the ship.

WHO

Friday

New Hampshire Wildcats (5-10-0, 4-8-0 WHEA)
at Boston College Eagles (6-7-1, 5-5-0 WHEA)

Saturday

Boston College Eagles (6-7-1, 5-5-0 WHEA)
at New Hampshire Wildcats (5-10-0, 4-8-0 WHEA)

WHAT

An offensive jumpstart

WHERE

Friday
Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

Saturday
Whittemore Center Arena
Durham, NH

WHEN

Friday, November 18, 2022
6:00pm EST

Saturday, November 19th, 2022
2:00pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

Both games this weekend, like all Hockey East conference games, will be streamed live on ESPN+. Here is a link to Friday’s game at home, and here is a link to Saturday’s game at the Whitt.

LAST TIME OUT

New Hampshire split last weekend with Merrimack, winning game one 3-0 before falling in overtime in game two, 5-4. That’s definitely the expected result for a weekend series between these two teams as both the Wildcats and Warriors have almost identical records and are right next to each other in the KRACH rankings.

Boston College was swept last weekend by No. 7 Northeastern, and while getting shut out twice wasn’t fun, game two saw the Eagles actually control play to a pretty surprising extent, outshooting the Huskies over the first 40 minutes of play before ultimately falling 2-0. There was some optimism to be found there.

PROJECTIONS

KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles ranked 19th and UNH in 28th. Running the numbers gives us the Eagles with an 72.22% chance of winning, or BC -304 with your local bookie. That also works out to about a 52% chance of a BC sweep on the weekend.

The GRaNT rankings (used for point spread) likes both teams a bit better, with the Eagles in 15th and the Wildcats in 25th. Our calculator gives us a projected score of 2.94 to 1.54 in favor of the Eagles, or something like a 3-1 or 3-2 BC win.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

No offense, but... Where has the offense gone? Even playing against Northeastern, you’d have hoped for BC to get a couple goals in there with Aerin Frankel no longer with the Huskies. But certainly Boston College would have expected to score more than one goal against UConn the week before as well. The offense needs a spark, whether it comes from shuffling lines or from something else, so it will be interesting to see what changes Coach Crowley may have made in practice this week.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

The Beatles — With A Little Help From My Friends

The offense needs a little more fluidity. Maybe new linemates? Maybe trusting the ones they’ve got more? More teamwork, more goals.

PREDICTIONS

BC sweeps this one. There’s a couple pretty good data points from earlier this year from the series with BU where the Eagles dominated both games. UNH and BU (and Merrimack, who the Wildcats just split with last week, as we said earlier) are all almost identically ranked. This will probably look like the series against the Terriers, and UNH doesn’t even have its Olympic ice advantage at The Whitt anymore. Let’s go with 3-0 and 4-2 BC victories on the weekend.