BC Men’s Hockey Punts BU 4-1, Clinches Hockey East Regular Season Title Outright

Boston College Men’s Hockey didn’t play their best game of the year against Boston University, but even a so-so game still looks pretty great for the Eagles at this point. BC scored early and never really let the Terriers in the game despite giving BU plenty of possession, and the Eagles took the 4-1 win at Agganis Arena.

BC had already clinched at least a share of the Hockey East regular season title as well as the #1 overall seed in the conference tournament thanks to UConn’s upset win over UMass on Friday night, so the Eagles just needed a tie or better against BU to clinch the title outright. And they did what they had to do.

Boston College scored the game’s first goal nice and early at the 7 minute mark of the first period, though thanks to Providence vs. Maine running late on NESN, there’s no evidence that the goal ever happened. We’ll take Twitter’s word for it, though. That was enough to carry the Eagles to the locker room with the 1-0 lead despite only getting 5 shots on goal in the first period.

Connor Moore extended the lead to 2-0 in the second period somewhat against the run of play while the Terriers continued to get solid possession. His shot from long range found its way all the way through to beat BU’s Sam Tucker for the score.

But the second period was once again really a “just enough” effort despite the 2-0 score. Though obviously BC wasn’t exactly dominated, you’d like to see the Eagles hold the puck a bit more and get more pucks to the net.

Fortunately, the third period saw the Eagles extend the lead even further thanks to a great rip from David Cotton.

That made it 3-0, and you got the feeling that it just wasn’t going to be BU’s night from there.

However, the Terriers did give BC fans flashbacks of the Beanpot semifinals before the night was over. BU scored one a few minutes later with more than half the third period to play to make it 3-1, and given that BU hadn’t been playing all that badly, there was a worry that the Terriers would find a way to pull back into this one. But BC did a much better job of closing down opportunities, and Graham McPhee was able to finish things off with the empty netter with seven seconds to play.

And now we’re just left with one more week in the regular season. BC will take on New Hampshire for a home and home on Friday and Saturday nights, and while the league is locked up, there’s still plenty of jockeying for position to be done nationally where the Eagles are clinging to the #4 overall seed in the Pairwise. A sweep over the Wildcats would go a long way toward solidifying their position as we head into Trophy Season.