Analysis: Boston College Men’s Hockey 2023-24 Schedule Release

Boston College has announced the men’s hockey schedule for the 2023-24 season, with the Eagles looking to bounce back after a inconsistent season under first year head coach Greg Brown. With Brown back for his second season and an enormously talented freshman class coming in, there should be some big expectations for BC in Hockey East and beyond. The schedule gets underway with a road game on Saturday, October 7 and can be viewed in full here.

For the third straight season, the Eagles will open up with a game against Quinnipiac. Some of the newer players may struggle to get acclimated to the college style of play against the Bobcats on their banner-raising night, who enter the season as the defending champions after an impressive run in the 2023 NCAA Tournament that ended with an overtime win over Minnesota.

After the opening game comes a long out-of-conference home stretch that includes a game against an always talented Denver team and two against a Michigan State team that managed to finish .500 last season after a number of down years. MSU in particular is slated to have an impressive roster this season as well and will be legitimate threats to win the Big 10.

November looks like it might be the most difficult month on the schedule, with Hockey East play getting fully underway while BC plays six of their eight games on the road. This includes non-conference games against familiar opponents in Notre Dame and Harvard, two teams that defeated the Eagles last season.

Boston College has a light December schedule before heading into the winter break and, with no tournament games in late December or early January like they’ve played so often, it looks like they shouldn’t have any players out due to the World Juniors this year. The World Juniors takes place from December 26-January 5 and with BC off from December 9 until January 12, it looks like anyone who is playing in that tournament (and there will likely be several Eagles representing their country this time around) should be back on campus when the second half of the season gets underway.

As for that second half, it starts off strong and doesn’t let up until the final week of the regular season. After a home-and-home series with both Providence and Merrimack, BC plays BU three times in the span of 11 days, including once in the opening round of the Beanpot. BU made a run all the way to the Frozen Four last season and is bringing in an excellent recruiting class of their own, so these games should live up to the hype we’ve come to expect from the Battle of Comm. Ave.

The home stretch of the season looks like it may have broken pretty favorably for the Eagles, as six of their last seven games are against UMass, Vermont, and New Hampshire, the three teams that finished at the bottom of Hockey East last season. Assuming BC is a bit higher up in the standings this time around, those games could be a great chance to pick up some important points to improve their outlook for both the Hockey East Tournament and the NCAA Tournament if they’re looking for a long postseason run. They’ll close the season with a March 9th road game against a Merrimack team that surprised just about everyone last season when they finished second in Hockey East and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011.

BC will have a chance to make a statement right off the jump with some big out of conference games early on before they settle in to their normal Hockey East schedule. This should be an exciting season for the Eagles with a roster that should be significantly more talented than last year, so October 7th can’t get here quickly enough.