BC Women’s Hockey vs. Merrimack & Vermont: Final Thoughts & Predictions

With the football bye this weekend, all eyes will be on Boston College Hockey. The women’s team looks to gain momentum after a pair of huge overtime wins over #10 ranked Saint Lawrence last week. It gets a whole lot easier for the Eagles from here on out with only the Beanpot left for nonconference games and Hockey East lacking a true elite contender, though with plenty of second-tier teams on the rise.

BC does not get one of those second-tier teams this weekend. They get the two teams who finished last and second to last in the 2018 WHEA standings.

WHO

Merrimack Warriors (3-0-2, 0-0-1 WHEA)
at No. 6 Boston College Eagles (3-2-0, 0-0-0 WHEA)

Vermont Catamounts (0-1-2, 0-1-0 WHEA)
at No. 6 Boston College Eagles (3-2-0, 0-0-0 WHEA)

WHAT

Hopefully a stress-free weekend for once, FFS

WHERE

Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

WHEN

BC vs. Merrimack: Friday, 10/19/18, 6pm EDT
BC vs. Vermont: Saturday, 10/20/18, 3pm EDT

HOW TO WATCH

This week’s games, like all BC men’s and women’s hockey home games, will be streamed live on ESPN3. You can watch the game on TV as well if you have Xfinity. Just say “ESPN3” into your voice remote and select the game from the menu.

LAST TIME OUT

In a sort of bizarre twist, Merrimack is undefeated and Vermont is winless. The Warriors, despite finishing last in the league last season, are definitely the scarier team. They aren’t “Good,” per se, but they did earn a point from BU last week with a 2-2 tie.

Vermont seems to be in for kind of a rough year. After opening with a loss to UConn, the Catamounts had two ties against Quinnipiac last week. Most concerning to UVM is that they gave up a 63 shots — including a whopping 37 on Saturday — to a team that will often go out of their way to avoid even the appearance of trying to score goals.

Boston College had a wild weekend featuring matching 2-1 overtime wins over #10 Saint Lawrence. And it turns out that both wins will count in full for the Pairwise now! Hooray!

BIG QUESTIONS

Will Merrimack continue their slow but meaningful improvement as a new D1 team and give BC trouble this weekend? Can the Eagles put up 50 shots on the Catamounts? Can Boston College earn a shutout? Does Boston College even know what a shutout is? Who would win in a fight, a Catamount or a Warrior? Who would win in a fight, a Catamount fan or a Warrior fan? Is there anything whatsoever that BC could do this weekend to make us feel good or is this just going to be a season of “Yeah we beat a bad team, but who knows if we can take down one of the tournament teams?”

RANDOM, POSSIBLY INCORRECT FACTS FROM MERRIMACK’S & VERMONT’S WIKIPEDIA PAGES

Merrimack College has one of the shortest Wikipedia articles I’ve ever seen. It’s even shorter than the wiki for the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.

The Latin version of “University of Vermont” is “Universitas Viridis Montis,” which translates literally to “University of the Green Mountains.” Which means that the state name “Vermont” itself is basically short for “Green Mountains.” Huh. That’s an actually interesting fact for once!

ICE CREAM OF THE WEEK

White Mountain Creamery — Death By Chocolate

Get your Green Mountain nonsense out of here. White Mountain or GTFO. Hopefully both Merrimack and UVM experience Death By A Million Goals. Ha! Haha!

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Blink-182 — All The Small Things

You’ll hear me say it every single week, but BC really doesn’t have many (any?) opportunities the rest of the season to test themselves against a great team. In these games against weak opponents, they need to do all they can to try and minimize their own mistakes and be sharp. They need to focus on doing All The Small Things well. See what I did there?

PREDICTIONS

We’ll get a shutout at some point this season, right? Playing two of the worst teams in the conference seems like as good a time as any to put one on the board. Both of these teams tend to play us close, but after playing 4 of our first 5 games against ranked teams, this weekend should be like taking off the batting donut. I think both games will be comfortable — I like the Eagles 4-0 over Merrimack and 5-1 over Vermont.