Eagles claim first regular season title since 2005.

Boston College finally accomplished what no other BC team has done since 2005, that is to win the Hockey East regular season title. BC's newly formed line of Paul Carey, Jimmy Hayes, and Pat Mullane was fantastic in the 4-3 win @ UNH to claim the title. Chris Krieder will be out 4-6 weeks thanks to his broken jaw. This could be a devastating blow for the Eagles title run. BC will have to play Umass this week in the quarterfinals of the Hockey East tournament. BC should be able to escape that one as it has not lost to Umass in the last 7 games dating back to two seasons ago. If BC were able to make it to the Garden next week, they will have a tough time without Krieder. The lines have been adjusted to Gibbons-Atkinson-Whitney, J.Hayes-P.Carey-P.Mullane, B.Almeida-B.Arnold-S.Whitney-K.Hayes-P.Brown-Dyroff or T. Atkinson will be the right wing depending who has the better week in practice. It was Dyroff who got the start Saturday @ UNH.

Winning the Hockey East tournament title will be tough for the Eagles this year. Yes BC is the defending champs and have the most championships out of any teams(9) but Hockey East is loaded once again this year with BC, BU, Maine, UNH, NU, and Merrimack all looking to earn bids for the NCAA tournament. BC is 4-0 vs archival BU, 2-1 vs Maine and UNH, 2-1-1 vs NU, and 1-2 vs MC. OF all these teams, I think the team the is the biggest threat to BC would be the University of Maine. MAine has the best player in the country in my opinion in Gustav Nyquist. Nyquist is an amazing play maker who can beat any team with his amazing speed and super hard shot. UNH I think is a favorable mathcup for the Eagles. UNH's first line is a threat, but other than that line, UNH is not very deep. MC is a very deep team, with a lot of senior leadership, but I am not sure if they will be able to perform under pressure if they make it to the garden , will they be able to handle the pressure. NU has challenged BC in all four of their games this year. They beat BC in the most recent meeting, and tied up BC at Conte, which is as close to impossible as it gets. This should be an interesting couple weeks of Hockey, but it is when Coach York gets his team ready to play better than anyone. Here are my predictions for the playoffs.

1st Round-
BC over Umass-4-2,3-0
UNH over Vermont-3-2,2-3(UVM),4-2 (UNH)
NU over BU-3-2(NU),4-1(BU),4-3 OT (NU) UPSET SPECIAL
Maine over Merrimack-7-6,4-2(MC),4-3 OT (UMAINE)

Semi finals
BC over NU 4-2
Maine over UNH 4-3 OT

Finals
BC over Maine 6-5!!