Boston College Men’s Hockey Defeated by Harvard 6-3

The Boston College men’s hockey team dropped their second consecutive game and saw their winless streak rise to eight on Tuesday night in a 6-3 loss to Harvard. This was a weird one, with BC looking pretty solid for almost two full periods of play before the wheels completely fell off in the third. The Eagles were without their three Olympians in this one, as Jack McBain, Marc McLaughlin, and Drew Helleson are all off preparing to represent their national teams in the coming Olympic Games.

Despite being so shorthanded, it was BC who got on the board first less than two minutes into the first period. After a long stretch spent defending in their own end, Colby Ambrosio managed to find a loose puck behind Harvard’s net after some nice forechecking work and slide it out front to a wide open Kruse. Kruse made no mistake, putting the puck home for his third goal of the season. They doubled their lead about six minutes later, when Patrick Giles finished off a great passing play for his tenth goal of the season. Giles drove hard to the net and managed to beat his man to get on the end of a centering pass from Trevor Kuntar and redirect the puck into a wide open net for a 2-0 lead. That was it for the scoring in the first period, as BC killed off two penalties before coming up empty on a power play of their own to head into the first intermission with a two-goal lead.

Casey Carreau made it 3-0 about eight minutes into the second period, deflecting a shot from Marshall Warren home on the Eagles’ third power play chance of the night. The BC moved the puck pretty well on the power play and Trevor Kuntar almost scored a few seconds earlier, but it was Carreau’s third goal of the season that gave the team a three-goal lead. Harvard managed to finally get on the board with a power play goal of their own a few minutes later to cut it to a 3-1 game, and they added a second on the power play with 30 seconds remaining in the period to make it a one-goal game after two periods of play.

Harvard tied it up just 35 seconds into the third period to complete their comeback and give us a brand new game, and about a minute later, a bad hit from Matt Argentina resulted in a five minute major and a game misconduct for the freshman forward. BC put together an impressive kill for 4:44 of the five minutes, but Harvard scored one with 16 seconds left and added another just a few seconds after the penalty expired to take a 5-3 lead. And that was pretty much it. It never really looked like BC was going to get themselves back into the game after Harvard took the lead and a late empty net goal for the Crimson capped the scoring and gave them six consecutive goals against BC for a 6-3 final.

It’s hard to come away from this game feeling anything but disappointed. Sure, a team that already had some issues was missing three of its best players, but a 3-0 lead halfway through the game shouldn’t turn into this kind of game. Instead putting the game away, we saw more of the same problems that we’ve seen all season, including a penalty kill that was beaten three times (with a fourth goal being scored basically as another power play was ending). Harvard scored four of their goals in about seven or eight minutes of game play, and that just can’t happen no matter who you’re missing from your lineup. Things don’t get any easier for BC moving forward, as the Eagles host Hockey East leaders UMass Lowell on Friday night as they’ll try once again to put an end to this skid that still has them winless since the calendar flipped over to 2022.