The Injuries Pile Up but Andre Gasseau Come Through: Boston College Men’s Hockey Weekend Thoughts

It doesn’t seem like it should be possible, but we’re already approaching the end of the hockey season. The Boston College men’s hockey team has just one regular season game remaining before they begin what will hopefully be a long playoff run, and they control their own destiny as far as the #1 seed in Hockey East goes. The Eagles have played four games since our last deep dive, sweeping two games in Vermont before taking a regulation win and a shootout win in last weekend’s home-and-home with UNH. The Eagles are continuing to win at a high rate, but not everything is amazing right now. Let’s dive into some of what has stood out.

INJURY CONCERN IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE

There’s no getting around this one: the Eagles are banged up right now. And not just banged up in the sense that they really need some guys in the lineup to step up, but banged up in a way that could absolutely be fatal in the postseason.

Take a look at the lineups from this weekend. Oskar Jellvik – still out, good chance we don’t see him again. Brady Berard – out for both games over the weekend. Teddy Stiga – left after the first period of Friday’s game, who knows when we see him again. And it showed on the ice, especially with Andre Gasseau missing Saturday’s game due to a suspension.

Just look at the lines that were listed before Saturday’s game. Michael Hagens was listed as the third line left wing despite notably playing every game this season as a defenseman. Not even the fourth line! The third! That’s because two of the listed fourth liners – Will Traeger and Timmy Delay – have played less than 20 games together in their time at BC despite Traeger being a junior and Delay being a sophomore (side note: it was actually Timmy’s college debut on Saturday night, which is always an awesome thing to see. Congrats Timmy!).

None of that is to take anything away from any of the players listed, it’s really hard to get on the ice consistently for a team as good as BC. But Saturday night’s forward lineup did not look like one that you can have a lot of confidence in making a long postseason run. We’ve already talked about how Jellvik’s absence alone is kind of messing with how the top six looks, on Saturday night the top six was down to a top 3. By the third period, it felt like the top line of James Hagens, Gabe Perreault, and Ryan Leonard was taking every other shift. Perrault looked like he was out there for about three and a half minutes in overtime. That’s not a recipe for long term success.

The good news. Andre Gasseau isn’t hurt, he just took a very dumb penalty and got himself suspended while he was playing his best hockey of the season and maybe his BC career (more on that in a second). It doesn’t sound like Stiga and Berard will be out super long term and their return will go a long ways to fixing things. And the schedule lightens up a lot with the postseason on the horizon. BC only has one game next weekend and won’t need to play again for about a week after that, so there’s time to get these guys healthy. Because man, they really need to get these guys healthy.

ANDRE GASSEAU STEPS UP

First things first, the penalty that got Gasseau suspended was really stupid and not something he should be doing and as I said above, put an already shorthanded team in a really awkward spot on Saturday night. Don’t slew foot people.

Having said that, his absence hurt even more because Gasseau has been on fire recently at a time where BC has really needed him. He’s currently on a six game point streak and has points in eight of his last nine, but it’s the last two weekends where he really broke out the most. Gasseau had back-to-back three point games against Vermont and had two more goals before getting sent home early in Friday’s opener against UNH. He has goals in each of his last four games and five in his last three and he was the most dangerous player on the ice for the entire time he was out there on Friday.

Gasseau has been a rock solid part of BC’s lineup ever since his freshman season, but this last stretch of games is a real step up for him. He had 29 points in each of his first two seasons at BC, but he’s already at 28 in 32 games in this season with (hopefully) plenty more games to come. His 15 goals are good for second best on the team (an entire 13 behind Ryan Leonard) and they are already the most he has put up in a season.

Gasseau is such an interesting player to talk about because there’s really nothing about his game that ever flashes. There’s never a moment where he’s on the ice and something about his game just pops – with the possible exception of his absolute laser of a wrist shot that he shows off every so often. But at the same time, he’s just so solid at every part of the game. Even if he’s playing with players with a higher ceiling, Gasseau never feels like a passenger on his line. He’s making plays in all three zones and doing a bunch of the little things that help a team go from good to great. And over the last few weeks, he’s been doing all of that while on the best scoring run of his BC career when the team has really needed it from him. It really is great to see from the only upper classman currently in BC’s top six.

CONNOR JOYCE BEATING GOALIES CLEAN

A lot of times when a fourth liner gets a goal, it’s not a particularly pretty one. It’s a goal off of a rebound or a guy winning a battle in front of the net and it’s usually not a goal scored from distance. They score gritty, greasy goals and play a more straight forward game.

So I loved it when Connor Joyce just ripped a shot that beat UNH’s goalie cleanly.

Connor gets asked to do a lot of hard work when he’s on the ice and doesn’t always get a ton of playing time, so that had to feel good. And a nice reminder of how talented everyone on this team is, even if they don’t always get to show that off.