BC Women’s Hockey vs. #4 Northeastern: Final Thoughts & Predictions

Fresh off a hugeeeeee third period comeback win over the Terriers, Boston College Women’s Hockey is riding some momentum and has some confidence. The Eagles have played a ton of Hockey East games and sit atop the league standings thanks to games in hand, but now they’ve got their first ranked opponent of the season coming to Conte Forum on Tuesday night.

Northeastern sits at 4th in the USCHO poll and was far and away the favorite to win Hockey East thanks to all their returning talent, and as such, BC finds themselves as an underdog for the first time this season.

WHO

No. 4 Northeastern Huskies (10-1-0, 7-1-0 WHEA)
at No. 6 Boston College Eagles (11-1-1, 9-1-1 WHEA)

WHAT

A ranked opponent??

WHERE

Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

WHEN

Friday, November 15th, 2019
6:00pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

The game will be streamed live for free on CollegeSportsLive.com. Here’s a direct link to the game.

PROJECTIONS

This is the first time all year that the Eagles are underdogs.

KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles in 10th place after their win over Boston University this weekend, with Northeastern just above BC in 7th. Using our handy-dandy calculator, that gives the Eagles a 38.24% chance of winning — that’s BC +162 with your local bookie.

GRaNT (used for scores) likes both teams just a bit better with the Eagles in 8th and the Huskies in 4th. The score projection works out to 3.31 to 1.59, or something like a 3-1 or 3-2 Northeastern win.

We have a direct link to all our BC Interruption hockey calculators in the site header. Just hover over “More” at the top of the page to be linked straight to the Pairwise, KRACH, and GRaNT calculators.

LAST TIME OUT

Northeastern had a home-and-home against New Hampshire this weekend and won both games, though the had a much easier time of it in game one. NU took the first matchup 5-1 at home before taking a 1-0 squeaker on Saturday up at Lake Whitt.

Boston College had a one-game weekend, but it was a big one. The Eagles came away with a 4-2 win over Boston University at Walter Brown Arena on Friday evening for their first win over the year over a team that is actually good.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

Coming into the season, the pollsters had a pretty big gap between Northeastern and BC. The Eagles have closed that gap with a good start to the year, but the Huskies are pretty much unanimously the better team based on all of the rankings. Northeastern is a contender nationally, but I’m not sure the Eagles are at that point just yet.

If the Eagles can skate with Northeastern, it would be a good sign that BC can make a run this year.

BIG QUESTIONS

Do the Eagles have any shot of winning this game whatsoever if they take more than a couple penalties? Can the BC special teams continue the improvement they showed against Boston University? Will the Eagles be able to contain all-world Swiss forward Alina Mueller? Will Coach Crowley be able to take advantage of having last change to superglue Cayla Barnes onto the NU star? How much more annoying would this game be if it was BU that was a NCAA tournament championship threat instead of NU?

RANDOM, POSSIBLY INCORRECT FACT FROM NORTHEASTERN’s WIKIPEDIA PAGE

Northeastern started out as “The Evening Institute for Younger Men” at the Huntington Avenue YMCA. I would guess that not too many universities have such humble beginnings, and you know what, that’s pretty great! Stick tap.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Chili

It’s that weird time of year where it’s cold, but not cold enough to snow, but it’s also kind-of-raining-but-not-really-RAINING-raining so it’s an extra special kind of cold.

Everyone either has a chili recipe of their own or knows someone with a chili recipe that they swear by, so I’m not going to lecture you on what makes a good chili. Do what you like. My one “give it a try” recommendation is to top it with some sour cream. Someone told me to do that once a few years ago and now I almost can’t have chili without it.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

The Beach Boys — Don’t Worry Baby

The Mrs. stumbled across this song recently which somehow neither of us had heard before. It’s, obviously, very good. I picked it because even if the Eagles lose this game, it’s not the end of the world — Northeastern’s really good, and the most important thing is just for BC to show that they belong in the national conversation.

PREDICTION

Northeastern is the better team right now. They were better before the season started and BC hasn’t done enough thus far to totally close that gap.

I thought BC would tie BU this weekend and the Eagles surprised me. I have had this one penciled in as a close loss since the schedule came out, but the Eagles are certainly good enough to surprise me again. I’ll put this down as a 3-2 Northeastern win, and if that’s what happens I’d take it as a decent result.