BC Men's & Women's Hockey Each Play To Disappointing Draws

It was a rough day in the world of BC hockey. With the women coming off a big win over the Terriers on Wednesday and the men taking down the Friars on Friday, BC fans were riding high. Unfortunately, the excitement was brought back down to earth for both after a 1-1 tie for the women against Northeastern and a 3-3 tie for the men at Brown.

The 10th ranked ladies took to the ice first this afternoon at 2pm against an unranked Northeastern team, trying to climb their way into the NCAA tournament picture. The Huskies promptly took a 1-0 lead midway through the first period on a floating puck that deflected up and blooped right over the left shoulder of BC goaltender Corinne Boyles.

But the Eagles answered a minute and a half later to draw even on a power play goal by Haley Skarupa.

Unfortunately that would be it for the scoring. A back-and-forth second period flew by without a goal, and the third period was more of the same. The Eagles did have their chance to pull ahead with several late Husky penalties, including a lengthy 5 on 3 with 6 minutes left and another power play with 3 left. Despite a flurry of chances, the game progressed to overtime where 5 more minutes would pass with neither team gaining an advantage.

It was a tough tie that acted like a loss. This was the first of a stretch of "trap" games for BC, and not coming through with the win was very discouraging. It's now a pretty deep hole that BC will need to climb out of in the Pairwise in their hopes to make the tournament as an at-large team.

An hour after the final buzzer sounded, the men took to the ice against Brown for what we all hoped would be their 7th straight victory... but it was not to be.

The first period was probably an omen for how things would turn out as neither team was able to gain an advantage. However, it was Brown that had the better of the chances. Thatcher Demko, in his first game in quite some time, made a few dazzling saves to keep the game tied. The Eagles looked lackadaisical, lethargic, and generally disinterested.

Things looked up early on in the second period after Kevin Hayes scores on the power play in the first minute of the frame. But Brown continued to pressure, and was rewarded with two straight goals before the period was up to take the lead.

BC responded well, with a burst of encouraging play to end the second period, but it was for naught.

Another early goal, this time in the third period off the stick of Chris Calnan, brought the Eagles level with a whole period to play to retake the lead. But the Bears answered just 25 seconds later with a kick in the gut to once again pull ahead.

Johnny Gaudreau spent some of the beginning of the game being being looked at by the trainers with what appeared to be a slight injury, the result of quite a bit of hacking in the last couple games. So it wasn't much of a surprise that he was kept off the scoresheet for so long.

But there's a limit to the amount of time that any one team can keep Johnny Hockey quiet, and with under 6 minutes to play, he was able to pop the water bottle and drew BC into a tie with Brown.

BC had plenty of chances after that to get the win, but like the ladies earlier in the afternoon, it was not to be. The Eagles came out with a disappointing 3-3 draw, giving their RPI a bit of a hit but keeping themselves in 2nd place in the Pairwise.

The men are done for the weekend and can now focus on two big league games against BU (who is turning out to be one of the absolute worst teams in America, which is fantastic) and Maine (turning out to be a tournament contender). Both games have already sold out, according to the BC ticket office.

The ladies play tomorrow afternoon before taking on Vermont for two games next weekend.