#2 BC Women's Hockey Stunned By UNH, 3-1

The #2 ranked Boston College women's hockey team is in for a freefall when next week's women's hockey polls come out.

Despite outshooting the Wildcats 37-27 -- including 14-4 in the third period -- the Eagles fell by a score of 3-1 to an underwhelming UNH team. Boston College falls to 3-1-0, with UNH improving to 3-2-1.

This game was not good. It was very, very not good. Boston College didn't really look in sync until the last 10 minutes or so of the game, but by then it was too late.

UNH jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead with goals at 4:01 and 13:05 of the first period and never looked back. BC's only tally came with just 4 seconds left in the first period, a really nice shot from Haley Skarupa.

But that was all she wrote for BC. UNH doubled its lead back to two with a back-breaking goal at the end of the 2nd period and the Eagles were unable to respond.

There was the usual problem of not being able to kill penalties -- 2 of UNH's 3 goals came on the power play -- but there were plenty of issues all around.

Passes were not being connected on. Odd-man rushes were broken up before they even got a chance to break off a shot. In two separate instances, BC crossed the blue line with a 3-on-1 and a 2-on-0 (!) and managed to either have the play broken up or completely muff a setup pass to the point where the rush didn't even threaten.

Give credit to UNH who really took BC out of its game, but the Wildcats are a team that, with the talent on our roster, BC should be able to handle every time. The fact that they did not, and at times struggled mightily to get any mojo going, is very discouraging and was a real reality check for those of us ( ---> Guilty <--- ) who thought we would run through the conference schedule with a shot to run the table.

Clearly, that isn't going to happen, and there is a lot of work to be done before this team can be considered a true national championship contender. Fortunately, with such a young team, there is plenty of room to tighten things up as the season moves on.

In the meantime, though, expect the Eagles to take a severe hit in the national rankings this Monday.

BC hits the ice again this weekend with two tilts against ECAC programs, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm against Yale and Dartmouth.