Gabe Perreault Returns and the Eagles are Back to Crushing the Competition: Boston College Men’s Hockey Weekend Thoughts

Boy that was a lot of fun wasn’t it?

In what was surely one of the best weekends in the team’s recent history, the Boston College men’s hockey team won their first Hockey East Tournament since 2012, knocking off UMass and BU to claim their trophy. It was an extremely impressive two games from the Eagles, who appear to be absolutely rolling as they head into the NCAA Tournament starting on Friday. There’s plenty to talk about in regards to that tournament and how the Eagles match up in the coming days, but for now, let’s take on last look back at the Hockey East Tournament and what BC did to bring home the championship.

UTTER DOMINANCE

There’s really nowhere else that we could start this one: this was about as dominant a weekend of games that we’ve seen from BC in a long time. The Eagles took on two good teams on Friday and Saturday – two teams that are also headed to the NCAA Tournament – and turned both games into noncompetitive showings by the third period. They scored eight unanswered goals in their 8-1 win against UMass and kept their foot on the gas the next night in their 6-2 win over BU. Their 14-goal output was, probably unsurprisingly, their best in any two-game stretch of the season.

What might be most encouraging about the combined 14-3 score over the two games was just how BC was able to do it. The numbers themselves may be a bit more extreme than they have been for the rest of the season, but for the most part, the Eagles followed the same script that they have found success with all year. To begin with, their biggest stars did a lot of the heavy lifting on offense. Of the 14 goals that BC scored, 12 came from Will Smith, Ryan Leonard, Cutter Gauthier, and Gabe Perreault. Another came from Andre Gasseau after a jaw-dropping assist from Gauthier, meaning that the four first rounders directly contributed to all but one of the goals this weekend. Beyond that, BC continued to do what they’ve done all season. The penalty kill was excellent, killing of seven of the eight power plays they faced including a huge five-minute kill late in the first period of what was still a close game on Friday night against UMass. And of course, Jacob Fowler continued his sensational freshman season with two more standout performances in net.

And then there’s the power play, which might have stood out more than anything else over the weekend. BC scored six power play goals in their two games, including four on their first four chances against BU. They converted in just about every way imaginable too, scoring goals off of rebounds, on the rush, with quick passing plays, and even by just throwing pucks on net from bad angles. The top unit was absolutely lethal all weekend and their success now has BC’s power play ranked second in the nation to go along with their top ranked penalty kill. Everything was working this weekend for the Eagles and if they’re really hitting their stride now, they couldn’t have picked a better time to do so.

BLOCK PARTY WEEKEND

Jacob Fowler had two great games in net but it has to be said that he had some help in front of him. The Eagles have been fantastic at getting in shooting lanes all season but this weekend and Saturday night in particular they dialed that up to 11. BC had 15 blocks in Friday’s game before following that up with a ridiculous 28 against BU in the championship game. Six different Eagles were credited with at least two blocked shots on Saturday night, with Drew Fortescue having five and Aram Minnetian leading the way with six.

It has been so, so easy to focus on how good the offense has been this season, but a large part of BC’s success comes from the fact that they’re allowing just a bit over two goals per game. And it was far from a lock that this group on the blue line would be as successful as they have been. Fortescue and Minnetian are both freshmen playing huge minutes and Jacob Bengtsson (four blocks on the weekend) was another new face at the start of the season after transferring from Lake Superior. But the group has been great all season and their constant willingness to sacrifice the body to block a shot has been so impressive and absolutely worth discussing after what we saw against BU in particular.

PERREAULTS RETURN MAKES ALL THE PIECES FIT

Gabe Perreault returned to the lineup after missing some time with an injury and immediately fixed a lot of the problems that the Eagles have had over the past few games. The freshman line was reconnected and Cutter Gauthier was bumped back to his line with Oskar Jellvik and Andre Gasseau and almost from the first shift on Friday we were right back to normal. With Perreault gone, BC could feel too much like a one-line team at times, even if Jack Malone did some great work in the quarterfinals game against UConn a week ago. There were too many games before that where if the makeshift top line of Leonard, Smith, had to do all of the work. Now BC can put out two lines that are legitimate threats to score every single time they touch the ice. It’s hard to say that the Eagles can’t survive an injury to one of their big name forwards because again, they did keep winning during Perreault’s absence, but it just looks so much easier for them when their top two lines are healthy and rolling at the same time.

Also Gabe Perreault is just a ridiculously fun player to watch and can do crazy stuff like throw a tape-to-tape cross ice pass through four defenders sticks to set up his linemate for a goal.

It’s good to have him back in the lineup.