BC Women’s Hockey vs. #10 Providence: Final Thoughts & Predictions

And we’re back!

After a one week hiatus (for reasons heretofore unspecified but which don’t take a degree from CSON to figure out), the Eagles are back on the ice with the end of the regular season rapidly approaching. Hockey East announced on Wednesday that the women’s regular season will end next weekend (!), so with the Eagles playing a ranked Friars team that swept them earlier in the year, this is a huge opportunity for BC to put a vice grip on the #2 seed in the conference.

WHO

Friday:
No. 10 Providence College Friars (10-5-1, 10-5-1 WHEA)
at No. 6 Boston College Eagles (12-3-0, 12-3-0 WHEA)

Saturday:
No. 6 Boston College Eagles (10-3-0, 10-3-0 WHEA)
at No. 10 Providence College Friars (10-5-1, 10-5-1 WHEA)

WHAT

REVENGE WEEK

WHERE

**Games will be played without fans, so don’t show up hoping to get in the door**

Friday:
Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

Saturday:
Schneider Arena
Providence, RI

WHEN

Friday, February 12th, 2021
2:00pm EST

Saturday, February 13th, 2021
3:00pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

Both games this weekend will be broadcast in HDTV on NESN. What a tremendous year for TV coverage it’s been.

For those of you outside of the Hockey East area, you can stream for free at CollegeSportsLive.com

LAST TIME OUT

Boston College’s last games were two weeks back in which the Eagles completed their 2nd and 3rd games in a row against UConn. The Eagles did pretty well in those contests despite still playing with a short bench, coming away with 3-2 and 4-0 wins — the latter being their first shutout of the season. BC is riding a sweet little 8 game winning streak, good for 2nd longest in the country behind only #3 Northeastern.

Providence’s form hasn’t been the best. A dominating sweep by Northeastern two weeks ago seemed to have killed some of their confidence, because they took a 1-0 loss and a tight 5-4 win against lowly New Hampshire last weekend and didn’t look too hot in either matchup.

PROJECTIONS

With no inter-conference games this year, a national KRACH calculator would be pretty pointless. But since we’re only playing conference games, we can use a league-only KRACH projection. The sample size is smaller than usual, but with the regular season ending it’s starting to get to be pretty useful.

According to KRACH, the Eagles are 2nd in Hockey East, with Providence right behin them in 3rd. The numbers work out to BC having a 65.00% chance of winning, which comes out to a 42.25% chance of a BC sweep, or (gulp) a 12.25% chance of a PC sweep.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

Revenge! The Eagles only have 3 losses on the season — a 4-1 defeat to then-#2 Northeastern in which the Eagles were tied into the 3rd period, and a pair of extraordinarily frustrating 3-2 losses to the Providence Friars. The Eagles led in both games and, to the eye test, largely outplayed the Friars over those 120 minutes... but the Eagles got nothing to show for it.

THE BIG QUESTION

Where Are You, Special Teams? For as well as the Eagles have played this year, the power play and penalty kill have seriously been holding the team back. In BC’s two losses against the Friars, the Eagles were a combined 0 for 6 on the power play, while the Friars scored 2 PPG and 1 SHG in game one, and a PPG in game 2 — both game winning goals coming in the third period on special teams.

And it wasn’t just that weekend. BC’s a disappointing 12th on the PK and 19th ( ) on the power play nationally, and that’s just not going to cut it, particularly as we enter trophy season in just two weeks.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Oatmeal

COVID-19 has not been good for the cholesterol levels, man. I went in search of a delicious guilt-free comfort food a few weeks ago and realized that my old standby, oatmeal, was what I was looking for all along. It fills you up and lowers your cholesterol. Hell yeah. Many overnight BC Hockey Road Trips over the years with fellow BCI’er Joe Gravellese have featured a morning serving of oatmeal following a depressing loss the night before. It’s true soul food.

My go-to brunch during the work week lately has been to cook up some standard Quaker Oats (I’d get the good steel-cut Irish oats or whatever if it weren’t so expensive to eat it every single day) using vanilla oat milk (I could write an entire article on how delicious vanilla oat milk is, but I digress). Stir in a spoonful of honey and a shake or two of cinnamon, plus some sliced bananas, and buddy you will be in heaven. You are very welcome in advance.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Youngblood Hawke — We Come Running

Headed for the open door
Tell me, what you’re waiting for
Look across the great divide
Soon they’re gonna hear the sound, the sound, the sound
When we come running

Pretty big series here as far as regular season games go. BC’s 8 game winning streak has a lot of soft opponents in it, but Providence is probably the 2nd best team the Eagles will play this year. A sweep isn’t super likely, but boy, the Eagles would give themselves some serious momentum going into trophy season if they could pull it off.

PREDICTIONS

Providence hasn’t been playing great, but at least they’ve been playing. BC’s going to have to answer the age-old question of whether having a week off will make them rested or rusty.

I will say, though, that the week off did come at a good time. The team was starting to get getting pretty beat up and they were the only team in the country who hadn’t missed any regular season weeks. A short break probably did them good, especially with the regular season winding down.

Still, Providence is pretty good, and getting a sweep against a ranked team isn’t easy. I would be pretty surprised if a sweep happens in either direction in this series. Give BC a close 3-2 win at home this afternoon, with Providence returning the favor 4-2 (ENG) on Saturday at Schneider for the split.