BC Women’s Hockey vs. #8 Quinnipiac: Final Thoughts & Predictions

It’s Show Us What You’ve Got time for the Boston College Women’s Hockey team as they move from one of the easiest games of their season to one of the toughest. After handling Franklin Pierce of the NEWHA conference in game one, the Eagles move on to the second highest ranked team on their schedule in the Quinnipiac Bobcats.

This is the kind of game Boston College really struggled with last season. The Eagles were able to beat the bad teams, but couldn’t control the puck much against quality competition. Quinnipiac certainly qualified as “quality competition” last year as they advanced to the national tournament and took the #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes to double overtime — no small feat.

Quinnipiac might be an even stronger team this year, having lost only one of their top eleven scorers to graduation. The Bobcats did lose their starting goaltender, but they’ve got a grad student who played in 15 games last year to step right in. Boston College returns a stronger team than last season, too, though — so this is a huge opportunity early on to see just how good the Eagles really are.

WHO

No. 15 Boston College Eagles (1-0-0, 0-0-0 WHEA)
at No. 8 Quinnipiac Bobcats (2-0-0, 0-0-0 ECAC)

WHAT

Put-up-or-shut-up hockey

WHERE

M&T Bank Arena
Hamden, CT

WHEN

Friday, September 30, 2022
6:00pm EDT

HOW TO WATCH

The game will be streamed live on ESPN+. ECAC and Hockey East both have the same league-wide deal to show games on “The Más” this season, so with this being an ECAC home game, it’s pretty convenient for Eagles fans who already have a subscription.

Here is a direct link to today’s game.

LAST TIME OUT

Quinnipiac started their season with a small but minor slip out of the gate, coming away with a close 3-2 win over Maine in their first game of the season but needing overtime to get it done. They cleaned things up in game two, though, earning a more convincing 3-0 shutout.

Boston College played one game on their season-opening weekend and took a 4-1 win over Franklin Pierce, though they needed the full three periods to get their decisive win despite the 49-18 shot advantage.

PROJECTIONS

Keep an eye on this section over the next several weeks as we use the KRACH and GRaNT rankings, once all teams have started their season, to predict each weekend’s games!

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

New Hope, Or Same Story? There is hope that last year’s struggles on defense have been fixed — or at least mitigated — by the return of Olympian Cayla Barnes and the addition of some solid freshmen, giving the team a full completement of defenders to play with for the first time in a while. With this being the first game of the year against a quality team, we’re going to get a really early look into whether the problems have been fixed, or whether this year might be more of the same story of “getting wildly outshot by a good team.”

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Jay Z — Show Me What You Got

PREDICTION

I’m on the optimistic side of the fence for the Eagles this year and think there’s no way they aren’t better than their 15th place position in the polls. Having said that, I would like to see them prove it before I predict that they win a big game against a top 10 team, especially on the road. I’m going to call today a 1-1 tie as the final score for this one, but will be ready to start thinking big going forward if the Eagles can take a nice win this afternoon.