Northeastern Thoughts

I just want to offer a few quick thoughts on the game last night. In the interest of time, this is not going to be as thorough as some of the previous game recaps. 

I said it in my tweet last night and I will repeat it here- I thought BC played really well last night against Northeastern. It was eerily reminiscent to the game on Saturday versus BU- the Eagles were clearly the better team in the building for the majority of the game, but the opponent's goaltender turned in another incredible performance. As good as Drew Commesso was for BU on Saturday, Devon Levi was better last night for the Huskies, stopping 29 of 30 BC chances- many of those being high quality looks. 

I thought the key to the game was Northeastern being able to get out of the two early BC power-plays without giving up a goal. On both man advantages, but particularly on the first one, BC generated a lot of good looks. They're doing a nice job of moving the puck from east to west on the man advantage, forcing the opponent to scramble around. They're also becoming less reliant on Cutter Gauthier's one-timer as Gauthier is growing more patient with the puck on his side of the ice. They just missed a few deflections in front on those cross ice passes. It would be one thing if they weren't creating any good looks- such as what happened vs Vermont- but that isn't the case. If they keep moving it around at the level they are, the goals will come. 

Levi's best save of the night was probably when he stonewalled Cam Burke on the doorstep during BC's second power-play. It looked like Burke had a ton of open space, but Levi came out of nowhere to make the save. It would be the first of three big stops he had on Burke last night. 

Northeastern's goal was just the result of good net-front play by the Huskies. It was really the first time all game where they had sustained zone time and they took advantage when Matt Choupani beat Mitch Benson, giving the Huskies a 1-0 edge. 

I am not sure if it is an exaggeration to say that the second period on Tuesday was BC's best of the season. They outshot the Huskies 11-6 in the stanza, with more than half of those being high quality looks. I will say, despite the lopsided play, BC still gave up one or two chances on the rush each period. The play would be in the Northeastern zone for minutes on end and all of the sudden the Huskies would find a trailer behind the play, only for Benson to bail BC out. Obviously, it didn't help that Charlie Leddy was out with an upper body injury, but BC is still very susceptible to those type of plays through the neutral zone. 

BC tied the game up when Christian O'Neill tipped home a Connor Joyce shot from inside the blue line, two minutes into the second period. I thought BC's "ISL line" of Joyce, Burke, and O'Neill was their best unit on Tuesday. All three players generated some quality looks and consistently applied a tough forecheck on the Northeastern end. They probably could have had two more goals if it wasn't for Levi's heroics. 

They may have to appoint another special counsel to look into how BC only scored one goal in the second period. It felt like the puck was in the Northeastern end for almost the entire period. Whether it was a lights out save on Joyce in front or Marshall Warren (another guy I thought played well) later in the period, Levi was just outstanding. As I said after the second BU game, sometimes you just run into a hot goalie and there isn't a whole lot you can do. 

I thought the third period was the most even of the three, but BC just gave the game away on a pretty bad goal. BC had a chance to get the puck out from behind their own net, didn't, and after another failed clear from one of their freshmen defensemen, NU ended up taking the lead for good. It was a bang-bang play as the BC defenseman was definitely surprised that the puck ended up on his stick, but he was unable to make the play nonetheless before Jakof Novak put home a breakaway chance. 

Towards the end of the game, BC's best opportunity to tie it was on a power-play a little over halfway through the stanza, but much like Saturday, they were unable to score. Again, they generated a couple of good looks, but could not get the red light to go on. Unfortunately, the Eagles took two pretty obvious penalties at the end of the game, killing any chance they had to pull Benson and get a goal with the extra attacker on. With NU not getting a power-play for the first 57 minutes of the game, you had a feeling BC was due for an infraction and that is exactly what happened. 

So, let's reset. I don't want to sound like I'm trying to be overly optimistic, but if BC keeps playing the way they've played their past two games, they'll be a tough out at the end of the season. Obviously, going winless in five games is a killer when it comes to the pairwise, but if they're playing their best hockey come Hockey East tournament time, they can beat anyone. What's wrong right now? Well, I think it's two main issues. One, they've run into some fantastic goalies. Besides the first BU game, where BC got dominated, the Eagles have faced a combination of the Great Wall of China and the former Berlin Wall. At some point, if they keep generating the chances, they will find twine more often than they currently are. Secondly, and I think this is beginning to rear its head a bit more in the second half, this team doesn't have the killer goal scorers BC has had in the past. When their top guys aren't scoring goals, this team is going to have a really hard time winning games. That sounds like an obvious take (and maybe it is) but they're very dependent players like Gauthier and Nesterenko to the extent where if they are off, BC probably is going to struggle to score more than two goals. Now, that is a problem, but they have more than enough goal scoring help on the way next year so if players like Jellvik (who I also thought was great vs NU), Gasseau, and Joyce can continue to play well, they'll be adding that top end talent to a group of players that is improving. 

Obviously, Lowell is not the team you want to play when you're struggling to score goals, but we will see what happens on Friday in the Mill City. See you then. 

Go Eagles