BC Women’s Hockey vs. Holy Cross: Final Thoughts & Predictions

We’re back after a short week for Boston College Women’s Hockey. Tuesday’s game against Northeastern went pretty badly and after this preview we’ll never speak of it again. Fortunately, the Eagles go from their toughest game on the conference schedule to their easiest games, so if BC is going to get back on track, it will definitely be this weekend.

WHO

Friday
Holy Cross Crusaders (1-15-0, 3-18-0 WHEA)
at Boston College Eagles (10-11-0, 8-8-0 WHEA)

Saturday
Boston College Eagles (10-11-0, 8-8-0 WHEA)
at Holy Cross Crusaders (1-15-0, 3-18-0 WHEA)

WHAT

A get-right weekend for the Eagles

WHERE

Friday
Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

Saturday
Hart Center Rink
Worcester, MA

WHEN

Friday, January 21st, 2022
2:00pm EST

Saturday, January 22nd, 2022
6:00pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

Both games will be streamed for free on CollegeSportsLive.com. Here is a link to Friday’s game, and here is a link to Saturday’s game.

LAST TIME OUT

Boston College played better than the 5-0 final score would suggest Tuesday against Northeastern. The main thing was that BC evened up the shot count a bit from what they had been going up earlier in the season against good teams. Hopefully that translates into some positive game flow this weekend.

Holy Cross played a pair of games on Monday and Tuesday this week at home against Vermont and lost them both, first by a score of 3-1 in game one before really taking one on the chin in a rough 9-0 loss on Tuesday. Yikes.

PROJECTIONS

Finally, some games with the Eagles heavily favored. KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles ranked 19th — admittedly not great — but Holy Cross as one of the bottom teams in the country in 38th out of 41 teams. Running the numbers gives us the Eagles with an 89.2% chance of winning, or BC -826 with your local bookie. That also works out to a 79.57% chance of a BC sweep.

The GRaNT rankings (used for point spread) have the two teams slightly closer with BC in 22nd and Holy Cross in 36th. Our calculator gives us a projected score of 3.57 to 1.25, or something like a 4-1 or 3-1 Boston College victory.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

Back On Track. In what seems like an eternity ago at this point, the Eagles were riding high on a 6-0-0 start to the season. It’s kind of funny to look back at it now, but BC was actually ranked ahead of Northeastern in the polls there for a hot minute. That winning streak did come against a stretch of not-that-great teams, but that’s what the Eagles have on tap this weekend. BC has done what they’ve had to against the bad teams this year, and if they want to position themselves for a decent shot at putting up a Hockey East tournament upset, they’ll need to continue that and win both of these games.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Applesauce

That’s what our opponents eat, after all. Might as well make them feel welcome.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Air — Tyson Ritter

So what about us, what about us?
What about want and lust?
What about loving a free fall now?
But what about nights, there were those nights?
Yeah, you were dancing in the lights
What about this on the way by then?

Ha, “what about loving a free fall now...” Obviously most of these songs are only barely, sort of related to the game at hand if you kind of squint a little bit, but you do have to laugh at how well that line fits. The Sickos over there rooting for the men’s basketball team don’t have a monopoly on loving their favorite team despite everything coming apart at the seams. At least it’s sort of a new thing for the women’s hockey team.

PREDICTIONS

Look at it this way — if BC loses a game to Holy Cross, it would probably mark the low point of the last, like, 20 years or so of the program. You have to take the lows with the highs, but hopefully the lows don’t get quite that low.

BC won 4-2 against the Crusaders earlier in the year. That’s not amazing but it’s good enough, and frankly as bad as BC’s year has gone, Holy Cross’ has been even more of a nightmare. They’ve got a 4-0 loss to a NEWHA team this season. OUCH.

The Eagles will sweep this weekend. One game will be too close for comfort, but BC will get their first shutout of the season in the other. We’ll call it a 3-2 home win for the Eagles on Friday before getting a 4-0 road victory on Saturday evening.