You never want to be playing in the Beanpot consolation game, but perhaps the Eagles can use it to find some momentum. Boston College Women’s Hockey pulled out a nice win over 10th-ranked Harvard in a game the Crimson needed much more than the Eagles did.
There are three games left in the regular season, and BC is locked in a wicked tight battle for 3rd through 5th place in the the Hockey East standings. The Eagles have the 3rd spot right now, but UConn and Providence are right behind two points back with a game in hand. Each position holds a lot of importance — 3rd place avoids Northeastern in the semfinals, 4th place is the last spot to host the quarterfinal, and 5th place has to go on the road.
These final league games are big ones for BC — hopefully with a healthy roster, the Eagles can rack up some points and get some momentum with the tournament on deck.
WHO
Boston College Eagles (15-12-3, 13-9-2 WHEA)
at Maine Black Bears (12-12-7, 8-10-6 WHEA)
WHAT
A tricky road weekend that would be “trap games” were it not for the fact that BC is obviously not looking past anyone at this point
WHERE
Alfond Arena
Orono, ME
WHEN
Friday, February 14th, 2020
2:00pm EST
Saturday, February 15th, 2020
2:00pm EST
HOW TO WATCH
Both games will stream for free on CollegeSportsLive.com. You can get direct links here to Friday’s game and Saturday’s game.
PROJECTIONS
KRACH (used for odds) has BC in 15th and Maine in 24th. That puts the Eagles as a moderate favorite at 66.83% odds to win, or BC -200 with your local bookie (for entertainment purposes only, of course). That also comes out to roughly a 44.66% chance of a BC sweep on the weekend, though that doesn’t factor in the games being played on the road.
GRaNT (used for scores) has the two teams much, much closer, with BC in 15th but Maine up in 17th. As you might expect, that gives a close score projection as well. GRaNT expects a 2.60 to 2.43 final score, or something like a 2-2 or 3-3 tie — or perhaps BC pulling out a 3-2 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 Live Pairwise, Projected Pairwise, KRACH, and GRaNT calculators.
LAST TIME OUT
Maine has had a very average year, though they had a solid week last weekend. The Black Bears went 1-0-1 against Providence College (a big help to the Eagles as the Friars are one of the teams battling with BC for a top three spot), tying on Friday 2-2 before winning Saturday afternoon 2-1.
Boston College had a weird week, losing in very disappointing fashion by a score of 3-0 to UNH over the weekend before jumping ahead and winning pretty comfortably against #10 Harvard 3-1 in the Beanpot consolation game. Sports!
The Eagles and Black Bears faced off early this season, with the two teams sharing the points after a 3-3 tie in late October.
THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE
Boy, this is a tough weekend. Playing up in Orono is tough as it is, despite Maine being a perennial mid-to-lower table team in Hockey East. Even in the best of seasons, the Eagles struggle to come away with four points when playing at Maine, and this has not been the best of seasons. Still, this weekend is as important as any this year with BC needing to bank as many point as they can to get that #3 spot in Hockey East.
THE BIG QUESTION
Are the Eagles healthy? BC’s had a weird season with injuries. Senior captain Erin Connolly is out for the year, though she’s been out for some time. Top players Hadley Hartmetz and Hannah Bilka have both missed time due to injury, with Bilka out last week with an illness. There have even been some personal matters for players leading to missed time.
The Eagles have looked good this year at times, but with depth already an issue, the missed time took its toll. If the Eagles can put together a full roster this weekend (or as full as it can be with Erin “YES” Connolly in street clothes in more of an assistant coach role), BC should be able to look like the favorite this weekend.
RANDOM, POSSIBLY INCORRECT FACT FROM MAINE’s WIKIPEDIA PAGE
In addition to being a land grant university, the University of Maine is also a sea grant and a space grant university. I don’t have the slightest idea what that could possibly mean other than trying to sound cool. It works though! I wish BC was a space grant university.
GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK
Ribs
I made ribs for the in-laws tonight, and my father-in-law is still allowing me to be married to his daughter, so it must have gone well enough. My aunt out in Arizona makes the best ribs I’ve ever had, and she gave me the recipe, which I will now share with you:
Get a rack of ribs and pull off the membrane on the bottom (get it started and then pull it off with a paper towel — that’s the secret). Lather it up with a wet/dry rub of brown mustard, brown sugar, pepper, and a ton of garlic salt, then wrap it up in aluminum foil and bake at 325 degrees for 3 hours. When that’s done, pull it out, lather on your barbecue sauce of choice, and grill in the open foil to char it up a bit. Amazing. You’re welcome.
GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK
Green Day — Stab You In The Heart
Pictures don’t lie when you’re front-page news
Dagger to the heart coming down on you
Green Day’s new album “Father of all MF’ers” came out last week, and it’s short and sweet. Their last few albums were a disappointment (“Revolution Radio” was fine, but the concept behind ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré! just didn’t work), so it was nice to see them trim it way down to a super short, super-concentrated album of good stuff. Only ten songs, and only 26 minutes and 12 seconds long, but it’s a really good time.
The album has a good mix of some 60s feel, some garage band feel, and some nods to their older stuff, and Stab You In The Heart fits the same sort of mix as a great up-tempo belter with a familiar bluesy riff. Anyway, it’s fun. Give it a listen.
PREDICTION
What are we to make of this team? How does the team look so defeated in a game they have to have against UNH and then take down a ranked team that needs the win more than we do three days later? Sports, man.
I think BC can get the sweep if they’re healthy and if their heads are in the right places, but I just have too much Orono PTSD to call for a sweep — plus BC has been splitting just about every weekend for the last couple months. Let’s go with a BC win on Friday by a score of 2-1 before falling in a head-scratcher 5-3 on Saturday. But man oh man would four points, and a clinch of third place with some help, be nice to leave the north country with.