Another non-conference matchup, another brutal loss.
It was the same old song and dance for Boston College Men’s Hockey on New Years Eve. The Eagles made the trip out to South Bend, so to speak, but they didn’t bring any semblance of competitiveness with them onto the ice. The Eagles looked overmatched by a good team once again, and they were never in the game. Notre Dame scored twice within 34 seconds in the first period and never looked back on their way to a 4-0 win.
The Eagles really didn’t look like they belonged on the ice pretty much from the drop of the puck. The puck was in their own end for most of the first period, and after a Casey Fitzgerald penalty midway through the frame, the Irish scored their first goal of the game. Just 34 seconds later, Notre Dame had their second, and the two goal lead felt like a mountain that the Eagles didn’t have a chance of scaling. By the end of the first period, Boston College had only managed three shots on net, and none of them were particularly threatening.
BC did show up in the second period and played a bit better. The Eagles outshot Notre Dame 12-9 in the middle period, but struggled to finish chances and couldn’t trim the 2-0 Notre Dame lead before the intermission.
With solid play under their belts and no goals to be found, it felt like BC packed it in for the third period and didn’t manage to keep up their good efforts from the second. A five minute major for Graham McPhee early in the third pretty much put a bow on things for the Irish, and they got goal number three to pretty much ice things with most of the period still to go. Notre Dame got one more for the road late on the empty net to make it 4-0, and that was mercifully that.
Unfortunately for the Eagles, the non-conference slate is not yet over. BC will head out to Phoenix next weekend for a pair with Arizona State, who currently sit at 15th in the USCHO poll. If BC’s going to find their first out of conference win since the Lincoln administration, they’re going to have to find their game in a hurry.