Eagles And Brown Battle To Tie

The most difficult thing to do in sports is to get back up for a game vs a "bad" team after winning perhaps your most important game of the season. First of all, Brown is not anywhere near a bad hockey club, in fact they're only a few spots out of the bubble for the pairwise at the moment. We were extremely impressed with the way they played especially in the first and second periods in which they really took it to the Eagles. They were big, fast, and perhaps most notably, physical. Those are the types of teams BC struggles against and considering how well Brown played and how average we looked, I think everyone has to be fairly pleased with a tie.

The one thing that shocked me about Brown was how well they played Johnny G. Yes, he had a goal, BC's third, but other than that portion of the third period, he wasn't much of a factor in the game. They were very physical and barely gave him any room to do his thing. In fact, it was definitely the worst game for BC's top line since they were put together in late November. Give all the credit in the world to their coaching staff because what they did was extremely impressive.

The Eagles had a nice power play tally from Kevin Hayes to make it a 1-0 lead just a few seconds in the second period but other than that, the man advantage was back to average. The entries into the zone weren't too bad but it was the trying to sustain pressure part that threw BC way off. Brown covered the walls very wall and BC was not able to cycle the walls like they normally do. It was nice to see Chris Calnan score his first goal since the RPI game as yesterday was perhaps his best game of the season. Certainly his best weekend of the year when you look at how much of an impact he made on both contest.

Overall,you obviously want to win every game you play in but I'm not terribly upset about this game. Brown didn't have to play the night before, didn't have to travel, and it was probably the biggest game in the history of their program. They certainly played like it was. I thought BC's effort got consistently better as the game went on, especially in overtime but they just couldn't find a way to put one in the back of the net. Both Thatcher Demko and Brown goalie Tyler Steele were absolutely tremendous.

Positives- 

1. Escaping with a tie. Brown should have won that game.

2. Chris Calnan, Pat Brown, and Adam Gilmour all played exceptionally well last night.

3. Demko played great.

Negatives- 

1. Make that three straight rough games for the second line of Ryan Fitzgerald, Destry Straight, and Austin Cangelosi. We need those guys to score some goals.

2. Power play was 1 for 6. Ehh.

Player of the game- Chris Calnan

Next Up- Terriers.