No Good

In one of the more lifeless performances they have had all season, the Eagles fell at home to Vermont for the first time since 2010 in overtime last night by a score of 3-2. Give UVM credit, they played ten times harder than we did and they certainly looked like they wanted it a lot more than the guys in maroon and gold did. You would hate to think that BC would actually not show up for such a big contest but that's exactly what happened and don't let the score fool you. Vermont should have won by three or more goals. Honestly, not one guy stood out to me as someone who really made a difference for BC. It was just a slow, astoundingly poor effort from the Eagles and for that, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Two things really shocked me about how BC played. Number one, I could not believe how inept they were at breaking the puck out of the zone, I mean they couldn't get one clean breakout and you would have thought they were playing with guys they have never seen before. They literally could not make a clean pass coming out of the zone, it was either a turnover, an ice, or a defenseman rushing the puck up to the red line in order to start something. Secondly, we once again allowed a power play goal, insuring that BC has now allowed an opponent to score on the man advantage in 5 of their past 6 games. I can't sit here and pout about the way BC killed because the second goal was just a harmless on ice shot from the top of point that apparently Demko never saw. Another thing I noticed was how bad the first line was. I walked out of the rink scratching my head as to why they were not out there at all in overtime but then I was told that neither Gilmour nor Sanford had one shot on goal all night long. I don't blame the staff at all for not going with those guys in OT, if you don't get pucks to the net and don't look like your engaged in trying to win a hockey game, then that is exactly what is going to happen. They're good players but they don't have the ability to just show up and take over like Johnny G or Gerbe. They need to actually to show up and play hard in order to create some offense.

In the end, not much else I can sit here and do except hope they come out ready for today's game. I can understand why high school hockey players may feel out of it once and a while and not show up for a game or two but when it comes to college hockey, especially at this level, a display of effort that I saw from a couple guys last night, is something that is never acceptable. Despite this being of the more trying years in recent memories, no one can deny that these guys have played hard day in and day out but for some reason, they're losing that. Next year, things will be a lot different but right now, players have to understand that they don't have enough talent to win on talent alone. There has been a ton of games over the past 10 years in which were pushed over the top because of superior skating abilities. This team doesn't have those skating skills, they've got to actually play their very hardest for an entire game in order to win. Let's see what they have in store for today.

Game is at 4:30.