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

So, where is the women’s hockey team at right now? Offensively, their goal scoring numbers are way down from last year. But their possession numbers are much better and scoring defense is significantly improved this year as well. That jives with what we expected to see with an infusion of blue line talent from the Olympics, and offensively the Eagles do seem like they’re starting to put things together.

This weekend the Eagles have a couple of road games on the docket against Holy Cross and Maine. Maine has been an early season surprise, flirting with the Top 10 last week and sitting just outside the rankings as the first team Also Receiving Votes this week.

Holy Cross, on the other hand, is playing its first full season as a D-I team and sits at 40th out of 40 in KRACH, winless despite one of the easiest schedules in the country.

There will be blood. Parental guidance is suggested.

WHO

No. 6 Boston College Eagles (5-2-0, 2-0-0 WHEA)
at Holy Cross Crusaders (0-5-2, 0-2-0 WHEA)

No. 6 Boston College Eagles (3-2-0, 0-0-0 WHEA)
at Maine Black Bears (5-1-0, 1-1-0 WHEA)

WHAT

A bludgeoning. Hopefully two of them! But probably not.

WHERE

Hart Center Rink
Worcester, MA

Alfond Arena
Orono, ME

WHEN

BC vs. Holy Cross: Friday, 10/26/18, 7pm EDT
BC vs. Maine: Sunday, 10/28/18, 2pm EDT

HOW TO WATCH

BC vs. Holy Cross will be streamed live on PatriotLeague.tv, which I’m pretty sure is free.

BC vs. Maine will be streamed on GoBlackBears.com, which I’m pretty sure is also free.

Two free road games! What a time to be alive.

LAST TIME OUT

Holy Cross got swept 3-1 and 4-0 by Brown, which, wow, is just a terrible look. Brown is typically one of the 2-3 worst teams in the country each year. Holy Cross is a brand new program, but, yikes.

Maine split the weekend last week, taking its first loss 3-0 to a good Northeastern team and beating BU (woo!) 2-1. Probably about what you’d expect from a fringe Top 10 team, so Maine can’t be too disappointed with that.

Boston College took two uninspiring yet largely non-stressful wins against Merrimack and Vermont by scores of 3-1 and 3-0, respectively, to take their first 4 league points of the season.

BIG QUESTIONS

Are we going to see the offense put up 4+ goals for only the 2nd time this season against Maine (because doing it against Holy Cross won’t count)? Will the Eagles hit double digits against Holy Cross? Will the Eagles play a goaltender other than Maddy McArthur against Holy Cross in the blowout? Will the Eagles play Maine close or will they give us our first truly solid win of the year? Will the Eagles LOSE at Maine, because that’s definitely possible? What will the BC team do on the bus for the forty hour bus ride up to the arctic hellscape that is Orono?

RANDOM, POSSIBLY INCORRECT FACTS FROM HOLY CROSS’ & MAINE’S WIKIPEDIA PAGES

Holy Cross boasts that a pioneer of LSD (really) named Timothy Leary “was a student at Holy Cross, though he withdrew after two years.”

The University of Maine is situated on an island (??) and as such is one of only two land grant universities to be on an island. The other is the University of Hawai’i, which, I mean, technically, yeah.

ICE CREAM OF THE WEEK

We do ice cream of the week because hell yeah, ice cream.

Hood — Fenway Fudge

Is this ice cream anything special? Of course not. It’s not even legally allowed to be called “ice cream,” which is never a good sign (“Frozen Dairy Dessert”), but who cares? Friday’s game is during Game 3 of the World Series. So today’s ice cream is RED SOX ICE CREAM.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

The Interrupters — She’s Kerosene

Playing Holy Cross is a great way to pour kerosene on a thus far just “smoldering” BC offense, with the hopes that the momentum from scoring a million goals against the Crusaders will carry over after the trip up to Maine.

PREDICTIONS

Holy Cross is really bad. Maine might be good? But “good” in the sense of “they’ll win their games against bad teams but won’t be a threat to make the NCAA tournament.” Maybe they’ll flirt with the top ten the rest of the year and maybe they won’t, but they are the kind of decent team that an elite Boston College team should be able to handle.

Still, Orono has been a tough place for BC to play in the past. This is a pretty scary trap opportunity. I’ll predict an 8-0, 3-2 weekend sweep for BC, but I don’t feel all that enthused about the Eagles having to go up to Maine when they aren’t yet firing on all cylinders.