Well, here we go. Hard as it may be to believe, there are 2, maybe 3 games left at Conte Forum this year. It really flew by. BC is in a strong position to contend for hardware in both the Hockey East and NCAA tournaments, but I think we're all hoping to see a really strong performance against Vermont to reverse any jitters caused by the flat loss to Lowell in the regular season finale.
Let's get to it.
vs.
Best-of-three series
Game 1: Friday, March 11, 7:00 PM, Kelley Rink
Game 2: Saturday, March 12, 7:00 PM, Kelley Rink
Game 3 (if necessary): Sunday, March 13, 4:00 PM, Kelley Rink
THE MATCHUP
Storylines
- Health (again!): Stop me if you've heard this before - BC's last series was impacted by missing key players. Colin White and Chris Calnan both missed the Lowell series with injury, but White is "back to 100%" according to Jerry York. Calnan's status is still up in the air. It would be a huge boon to have Calnan back, whose presence on the fourth line gives BC four units that can all score. But of course the most important thing is that White is ready to go; he may well be the team's MVP.
- Scoring on Santaguida: UVM goalie Mike Santaguida returned after a long absence due to injury and helped power UVM to a sweep of UConn. Last year BC had no problem scoring on Santaguida in game 1 of the Hockey East quarterfinals, lighting him up in favor of Brody Hoffman, who ended up coming out of nowhere to steal the show and stonewall BC. The Eagles will be looking for similar success againste Santaguida this year. Obviously you always want to score early but that's especially true against a team with limited offensive ability that likes to drop in to a neutral zone trap.
- Keeping Puskarich off the board: Vermont's offense is incredibly limited beyond what their first line has been able to do - Mario Puskarich, Jarrid Privitera and Brendan Bradley. Their fourth leading scorer among forwards, Brady Shaw, has just 13 points. Based on past precedent I'd suspect we'll see Austin Cangelosi's line up against UVM's top unit; we'll see if they can shut them down.
He predicts a 5-0 BC win on Friday...
A 4-2 UVM win on Saturday...
And a 4-3 BC win on Sunday...
Predictions Contest
Play along at home!
Scoring system for the quarterfinals:
Correctly predict who wins the series, in right # of games: 7 points
Correctly predict who wins the series, wrong # of games: 4 points
Correctly predict a series goes 3, but get the team wrong: 1 point
EXTRA bonus point if you get a margin of victory of a game correct
EXTRA bonus point if you get the score of a game exactly right
Name | Predictions | GPS: | Points |
Grant Salzano | FRI: BC 3-1 SAT: BC 3-0 |
Grant will actually be at Saturday night's game, believe it or not. | 43 |
Joe Gravellese |
FRI: BC 4-1 |
It should be a fun weekend of hockey - hoping for lots of wins | 40 |
Laura Berestecki | FRI: BC 3-1 SAT: BC 6-2 |
40 |
|
Arthur Bailin | FRI: BC 3-0 SAT: BC 4-0 |
|
35 |
AJ Black |
FRI: BC 5-1 |
44 | |
John Fidler |
|
21 | |
Charcoal/ The Gifford Cats | Meow | 27 | |
New "Dan Rubin" Guy | 26 |
||
Caleb Childers | 7 | ||
Brian Favat | 1 |
Staff Prediction Summary:
All BC sweeps all around.
Fan Prediction Standings after last week:
JPDot 41 points
princisb 37 points
bostoncollegenyr 36 points
airforce987 35 points
pjpj23 37 points
cam_dezak 34 points
eagles2015 26 points
bcmike22 24 points
95dougie95 15 points
seobe 8 points
mig1168 8 points
bcmurt09 7 points
we are bc 5 points
kreidersjohnson 4 point
b0mberman 4 point
tommykay 4 points
totheheights 2 points
eagleeye9184 3 points
bceagles66 2 points
rmbc81 1 point
spillerhighlife 1 point
bceaglekeepr 1 pint
suckstobu 1 point
Leave your thoughts and predictions on the weekend below!