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

*UPDATE: TONIGHT'S GAME HAS BEEN POSTPONED*

The winter break could not have come at a better time for Boston College Women’s Hockey. Their hot start to the season was quickly erased with a brutal end of the first half with the Eagles going just 4-8-0 in their last 12 games — with three of those wins coming in overtime. Not good.

COVID protocols and injuries found their way to the BC roster, but that has obviously not been a BC-centric thing. Hopefully the Eagles are nice and rested, because their first six games of the second half are against the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place teams in Hockey East (with 4th being the Eagles themselves).

WHO

Providence College Friars (8-5-5, 5-4-2 WHEA)
at Boston College Eagles (10-8-0, 8-5-0 WHEA)

WHAT

Puck drop for the second half of the season

WHERE

Conte Forum
Chestnut Hill, MA

WHEN

Monday, January 3rd, 2022
7:00pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

The game will be shown live on NESN, with folks outside of New England able to stream the game for free at CollegeSportsLive.com.

LAST TIME OUT

Boston College’s last game of the first half was, unfortunately, pretty typical for how things had been going for a few weeks. The Eagles lost 3-1 to Vermont, but most frustrating was the complete blowout on the shot chart with the Catamounts outshooting BC a whopping 47-16. The Catamounts put up 19 shots in the first period alone compared to BC’s 16 over the entire game.

Providence has already hit the ground running on the second half with a game against Vermont on New Years Eve, taking the win at home by a score of 3-1. The Friars were supposed to have another game on Sunday against Holy Cross, but that game was postponed due to COVID protocols.

PROJECTIONS

KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles in 16th place after their loss to Vermont, with Providence a bit higher in 12th. Using our handy-dandy calculator, the ratings give the Eagles a 41.07% chance of winning — that’s BC +143 with your local bookie.

The GRaNT rankings have the two teams ranked similarly, with BC sitting at 17th and Providence in 11th. Our calculator projects a final score of 2.28 to 1.66, or something like a close 2-1 Friar victory.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

MICHAELA BOYLE SZN! The BC offense will get a nice 2nd half shot in the arm (HA get it? Get your booster, everyone) with the addition of graduate transfer Michaela Boyle to the roster. Boyle, from Reading, MA, has had a nice collegiate career at Clarkson and Robert Morris, and actually has a national championship ring from her freshman season with the Golden Knights. She comes in with a reputation for being a great shooter who knows how to find the net — and her addition to the lineup couldn’t come soon enough.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Lunch Leftovers

Back to the grind. For those of you who got time off over the holidays... well, it’s gonna be a rough day back at the office. You’ve got God knows how many emails to get through from your time off and probably half a dozen fires to put out on your first day back. Trust me; I’ve been there.

We both know you aren’t going to have time to take a lunch this afternoon. Just bring it home and have it for dinner while you put on the women’s hockey game and decompress.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Young Rising Sons — High

Is this the low, or is this the high?
Just let it go; enjoy the ride
Without the low there ain’t a high

“Just let it go; enjoy the ride...” If that’s not a lyric for the 2021-2022 BC Women’s Hockey season I don’t know what is. An NCAA tournament at-large spot is probably out of reach barring an absolutely bonkers second half of the season, but some hardware isn’t totally out of the picture if the team gets hot. Let’s just enjoy the rollercoaster and see where we end up.

PREDICTION

A lot of the games over the next month or so are going to be disproportionately dependent on how many players on each team are missing due to injury or COVID protocols, and it’s going to be pretty tough to predict results until we see line charts. Having said that, we’ll make our prediction anyway.

I’d call this game a loss if we were a week removed from losing to Vermont, but I think the winter break came at a good time to shake off the bad juju. I also think Michaela Boyle is going to make a big difference to the roster. Now, let’s keep our feet on the ground here — she’s not an all-galaxy Olympic superstar who’s going to Lebron James us to all of the trophies. But she is a strong, experienced, capable scorer who will fill a pretty big need on the roster, and there’s not doubt she’s going to make a difference. I think she scores in this one and I think the Eagles squeak out a close win by a score of 2-1.