BC Women’s Hockey Falls 3-0 To No. 5 Northeastern, Ending Season

Boston College Women’s Hockey came up short against the 5th ranked Northeastern Huskies on Wednesday night, falling 3-0 at Matthews Arena in the Hockey East semifinals. The loss brought a disappointing end to the season, as the Eagles aren’t ranked high enough to make it to the NCAA tournament as an at-large.

The game got off to an ominous start, as the Huskies banked in a goal off Abbey Levy’s skate from below the red line just 47 seconds into the game. While the Eagles responded reasonably well after the score, they couldn’t get an equalizer in the opening period.

BC appeared to tie the game up deep into the second period off the stick of Katie Pyne, but upon video review, the referees ruled that Pyne interfered with Northeastern goaltender Gwyneth Philips. This was despite Pyne getting shoved into the crease by a Husky defender and Philips going down like she was shot from the minimal contact. We can only pray that the Northeastern keeper will be able to physically recover from such a violent encounter.

Of course, because that’s how these things go, the Huskies scored almost immediately after the goal was waved off, bringing the score to 2-0 and really putting a damper on BC’s comeback hopes. An Alina Mueller empty net goal in the third period made it 3-0, and that was the final score in the last game of the season for the Eagles.

The focus now turns to next season. Coach Crowley will hope to persuade some of her top performers to return for their extra “COVID” season of eligibility, including top scorer Hannah Bilka and Olympic superstar Cayla Barnes. Combined with what is projected to be an exceptionally strong recruiting class for the Eagles, and Northeastern graduating an absurd percentage of their scoring, bringing BC’s top starts back for one more year would really make for an exciting run at some hardware next year.