BC Women’s Hockey vs. Maine: Final Thoughts & Prediction

Okay, here’s the good news: Boston College Women’s Hockey is 5-0-0 and, if we’re being honest here, is probably going to end up 6-0-0 at the end of this weekend. Here’s the bad news: The schedule gets significantly more difficult after the Eagles take care of Maine on Saturday with five straight against #6 Northeastern, #12 (kind of) Harvard, and #9 Providence on deck.

That’s not to say BC should be looking past Maine — but rather that the Eagles should get in all the fine-tuning they can on Saturday because it will be Go Time from that point on.

WHO

Maine Black Bears (2-5-0, 0-2-0 WHEA)
at No. 4 Boston College Eagles (5-0-0, 3-0-0 WHEA)

WHAT

This time, a nice comfortable win... for real this time.

WHERE

Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

WHEN

Saturday, October 23rd, 2021
2:00pm EDT

HOW TO WATCH

Saturday’s game, like all league games not picked up by NESN, will be streamed for free at CollegeSportsLive.com.

LAST TIME OUT

Maine actually put up a halfway decent pair of games last weekend for a team that scored zero goals. The Black Bears lost a 1-0 contest to a 6-0-0 UConn team on Friday before losing 3-0 (ENG) to #6 Northeastern. Not only that, but Maine actually put up 34 shots on the Better Huskies in the 3-0 game after putting just 17 on net against UConn. Pretty weird, honestly, but you’d have to say those are two not-bad showings for a team whose only wins so far are against LIU.

Boston College took care of business last week with a pair of one-goal wins over New Hampshire, both of which required some gutty late-game tallies to get all six points on the weekend.

PROJECTIONS

Once everyone’s played some games (looking at you, Ivies), this space will be used for KRACH and GRaNT projected odds and scores for the weekend games. But we don’t have enough results to use just yet, so watch for those in the coming weeks!’

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

Get an easy win. Five games, five one-goal victories. And all five against teams that aren’t very good. What gives? The Eagles have only played one game at home so far this year, so that could be a factor. With Maine looking like a team that is going to struggle all year (although probably a hair better than the other league bottom feeders UNH, Holy Cross, and Merrimack), you’d really like to see BC put up a nice, stress-free win before getting thrown into the first tough part of the schedule.

THE BIG QUESTION

Where are you, Power Play? Whenever you’ve got a general scoring outage, odds are you can look to the special teams play and find the same level of futility there too. Sure enough, the Eagles are an eye-poppingly poor 1 for 14 on the power play so far this year. The penalty kill is better (17 for 19), at least, which you’d expect seeing BC’s defense impress over the opening several games.

As we’ve been saying all year, getting the offense going should result in a pretty strong team here — hopefully the power play can find its stride and give a spark to the offense overall.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Cheesesteak, Lower Live

Oh God, yes. It’s been too long. For those of you at BC, I implore you to have one of these for me.

I will also use this opportunity to remind everyone about when the New York Times wrote an entire article about the BC Cheesesteak. What a world.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

The Orion Experience — NYC Girl

She’s got a style that’s all her own, that girl has got her shit together
She’s got that “ah, je ne sais quoi” that money can’t buy
She’s got a groove the way she moves, yeah, you could stare at her forever
Now here she comes, and there she goes in just a blink of your eye

Oh yeah, that sounds like it could be talking about BC Women’s Hockey alright. Maybe they don’t have their shit together on offense, but patience, my friends.

At this point almost all of my favorite songs come at the suggestion of my wife, who has amazing taste in music and is better at finding new stuff than I am. This song is ten years old so it’s not exactly new, but it’s new to me and probably new to you too given that it’s only got like 120,000 views on YouTube.

This song is a jam and the video is even better. Think of it as being about the city itself and not about a girl. Great stuff.

PREDICTION

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me six times... well, really shame on me still. If the Eagles can’t take control in this game, I’m going to really struggle to see how they take points from Northeastern next weekend. I’m holding out hope one last time that it all comes together right here, though. 4-0 Eagles — yes, a shutout! — and happiness for everyone.