Women’s Hockey East Quarterfinals, Boston College vs. UConn: Final Thoughts & Prediction

This is it: Win or go home. We’ve reached the postseason, and Boston College Women’s Hockey needs to win the Hockey East championship to advance to the NCAA tournament.

There’s good news about that, and there’s bad news. The good news is that Hockey East is single elimination this year, and single elimination hockey usually brings chaos. Northeastern is far and away the favorite to win the league, but the Eagles (and the other secondary teams in Hockey East) have definitely been capable of knocking off the Huskies in a single game this season.

The bad news, though, is that Boston College has to face UConn in its quarterfinal matchup. And unfortunately, playing UConn in just about anything this year has been a pretty freaking miserable experience.

Still, it’s pretty hard to go 0-4 against anyone, especially when you’re the higher ranked team and get to play at home.

WHO

UConn Huskies (18-12-4, 12-11-4 WHEA)
at No. 15 Boston College Eagles (19-14-1, 16-11-0 WHEA)

WHAT

The 2023 Women’s Hockey East Tournament Quarterfinals

WHERE

Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

WHEN

Saturday, February 25th, 2023
2:30pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

Today’s game, like all Hockey East games this season, will be streamed live on ESPN+. Here is a direct link to the stream.

THE TRENDS

Since completing the season series sweep against BC in mid-January, UConn has cooled off considerably. They’ve gone 2-4-2 in their last 8 games, with some really head-scratching results in there — the tie to a struggling BU and losses to bottom-tier UNH and Holy Cross really stand out. They cleaned things up with a pair of 3-0 wins over the Crusaders last weekend, but those were their first wins in a long while and the overall trend hasn’t been very convincing.

Boston College has been a little more consistent, with their only two losses in the last seven games coming against #5 Northeastern and #13 Providence — and the Eagles do have a pair of pretty impressive three-goal wins over those Friars in the same time frame. All in all, between BC and UConn you’d have to say the Eagles are on the better run right now.

PROJECTIONS

Alright, let’s get into some numbers.

KRACH (used for odds) has Boston College in 16th and UConn in 18th. Running the numbers gives us BC winning 56.08% of the time, or BC -128 with your local bookie.

The GRaNT rankings (used for point spread) sees just a little bit more separation between the two teams, with the Eagles in 14th and the Huskies in 20th. That works out to a projected score of 2.30 to 1.74, or something like a 2-1 or 3-2 BC win... or 2-2 at the end of regulation.

Yeah — this should be a close one.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

0-3. The Eagles were inexplicably swept in the season series against UConn this year, making them the only team other than #5 Northeastern to put up three W’s against BC this season. That’s right... BC was 0-7-0 against Huskies this year. Wild. It’s even crazier when you consider that BC is ranked above UConn in everything else you can think of — KRACH, GRaNT, NPI, likeability, you name it. How the Huskies have so thoroughly had Coach Crowley’s number this season I haven’t the faintest idea, because UConn has been completely average against everyone else this year.

But as anyone who has watched sports before knows, it is awfully hard to keep winning games over and over again against the same team — even if you’re the favorite — because your opponent starts learning how to counter what’s been working against you. The Eagles know that, and I’m sure the Huskies have that in the back of their minds, too.

PREDICTION

I do think the Eagles finally turn the tide in this series and get a win. BC was tied late against UConn in their third matchup, only falling with a game-winner and empty netter in the last 5 minutes of the game. But I do expect it to be a real nailbiter — the Eagles will need a lot of extra time to take this one. We’ll go with a 2-1 BC win in double overtime to advance to the semifinals.