Boston College Men’s Hockey Loses 3-1 to Maine

The Boston College men’s hockey team was unable to break their long winless drought on Friday night as they dropped their game against Maine 3-1. In a script we’ve seen play out numerous times over the past several games, the Eagles didn’t play a bad game for the most part and had their share of good scoring chances, but they were bitten by their complete lack of real finishing ability.

BC looked good to start the first period, stringing together four or five good shifts to get the game going, but it was Maine who got on the board first. Cutter Gauthier took a big hit on the boards on a breakout attempt and turned the puck over. That gave Maine a 2-on-1 out in front of Mitch Benson, and they made no mistake, converting easily to make it 1-0 just over five minutes in. The Black Bears made it 2-0 about 10 minutes later, scoring on a breakaway after BC lost the puck just a few seconds into their first power play of the night. The Eagles had a few half chances in the last few minutes of the period, but they were unable to cut into the lead and went into the first intermission chasing two goals.

The two teams skated to a scoreless second period, with BC getting the better of the chances and controlling play for stretches, but failing to convert. The Eagles had two great chances right off of the opening faceoff and Gautier fired a puck off the post on a power play later in the period, but as has been the case in so many recent games, they lacked the ability to finish their opportunities. Mitch Benson did make one big save late in the period to keep the game from getting out of hand and Maine held onto their 2-0 lead heading into the third period.

There wasn’t a whole lot of action for the majority of the third period, with the Eagles coming up empty on another power play and Mitch Benson making a few nice saves basically summing up the first 15 minutes. The Eagles looked completely dead in this one until Trevor Kuntar managed to fire one home from in close to make it a 2-1 game with 3:53 left in regulation. The Eagles pressed for a goal from there, and Benson was pulled earlier than normal to give them a shot with an extra skater, but Maine managed scored an empty net goal to put this one away.

If you’ve seen on BC game over the past few weeks, you’ve pretty much seen them all. There’s just no consistent goal scoring whatsoever on this team outside of Cutter Gauthier and even he hasn’t been lighting the lamp as much recently. They’re not all that bad defensively and Benson is certainly good enough to keep them in these games, but when the Eagles are down two-goals, it feels like the game might as well be over, even if it’s early on. This makes eight games in a row without a win for BC, and their next chance at getting things back on track won’t be any easier, as they take on BU in the Beanpot consolation game on Monday.