Midweek Column- Getting Ready For A Big Weekend

This is a big weekend for the Eagles. I don't care that it's only the second week of the season. This team needs to win and they need to do it this weekend. Last weekends performance versus a good Northeastern team was not very good and hopefully now that they have one game under the belt, the guys will play better hockey vs a solid UMass team. Last season, playing the Minutemen in Amherst was a tough task for the Champs but with a good week of a work and some adjustments here and there, this team can have a good game on Friday. After the game on Saturday, I walked out of that rink a little bit worried about not just the young defense, but more so, the lack of offense that the team was able to produce vs a pretty young Northeastern squad (Other then the Johnny G line). Again, I think a lot of the unproductive offense and mistakes in the BC end were due to first game jitters and some of the butterflies that the players may have had with that crazy crowd. Let's take a look at what needs to improve the most-

Break the puck out better-

When you don't break the puck out properly, it is going to lead to big problems and that is exactly what happend to us on Saturday night. I can tell you first hand from watching practice this week that they have worked hard at getting better at it.

The Turnovers-

Two of the NU goals were made possible because they either outworked the Eagles or they capitalized on a lousy BC turnover. It's not just the defenseman that need to be better in their ends but it's the forwards, especially the wings, that need to do a better job of helping out their defenseman on the walls.

I have a good feeling about this weekend because I think the players know that they may not have played great last week but that was just game one. One of the side effects about playing hockey at BC compared to any other school in Hockey East, is that you're going to get everybodys best effort every single night because teams will want to beat BC that much more. It's a big weekend early in the season that will show a lot about this team but in the end, I feel that they will be ready to go.

Preview on UMass coming tomorrow.

GO EAGLES !