The Boston College men’s hockey team was eliminated from the Hockey East Tournament on Saturday night, falling 3-1 to Northeastern in the quarterfinal matchup, The Eagles had chances all night and didn’t play poorly on the whole, but Northeastern goalie Cameron Whitehead was the best player on the ice and the Huskies managed to convert on their chances to advance to the semifinals.
The two teams played an entertaining yet scoreless first 20 minutes, with BC looking crisp and dangerous pretty much throughout. The Eagles spent a lot of time in the offensive zone and all four lines generated some chances, but they weren’t able to get on the board thanks to a strong period from Northeastern goalies Cameron Whitehead. BC’s best chances came on their first power play of the night when their top until controlled the puck in the attacking zone for about the first 90 second of the power play and had some great looks on net, but Northeastern managed to kill it off and keep the score tied at zero after the first period of play.
The second period started out much the same as the first, with BC carrying the play and not being able to find the back of the net, but Northeastern eventually worked their way into the game and created some chances of their own. Ryan Leonard did find himself on a breakaway and hit the crossbar for BC’s best chance of the night, but it was the Huskies who opened the scoring just a few minutes later when Jacob Fowler was beaten by a wrist shot rom the slot to make it a 1-0 game. They doubled their lead a few minutes later, scoring on a bad rebound from Fowler that found its way directly on to a Northeastern player’s stick to give the Huskies a 2-0 lead heading into the third.
The Eagles made a big push in the third period, but continued to be unable to break through until there was very little time left on the clock. James Hagens finally managed to get BC on the board with a nice shot on the rush with Jacob Fowler having been pulled and 2:34 remaining on the clock and BC got a late power play chance, but Northeastern was able to fire a puck into the empty net from their own to take home the 3-1 win.
This isn’t the end of the season for BC, as they’ve already secured their spot in the NCAA Tournament in a few weeks, but they had a chance to defend the Hockey East Tournament championship from last year and came up short, so this is a bit of a letdown. There were a whole bunch of chances that they left on the ice and it’s a bummer of a way to end a Hockey East season that was so much fun on the whole. The Eagles will now have to play the waiting game, with the Hockey East Tournament concluding next weekend before they will find out who they’ll be playing when the NCAA Tournament gets started.