There are only five games remaining in the regular season for the Boston College men’s hockey team, but there’s still a heck of a lot left to play for. The Eagles are currently tied with Maine at the top of the Hockey East standings, having lost the outright lead after dropping two straight games to follow what had been a nine game winning streak. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to take a deeper look at some of what has been going on (mostly thanks to the Beanpot), but there are no midweek games this week so let’s take a look at what
JELLVIK’S ABSENCE SLOWS DOWN SECOND LINE
BC’s top six forwards have been pretty much set in stone all season, with the top two lines being made up almost exclusively of some combination of Ryan Leonard, Gabe Perreault, Andre Gasseau, James Hagens, Teddy Stiga, and Oskar Jellvik. But Jellvik has been out with an injury since the opening round of the Beanpot and that has required some line juggling over these past few weeks.
For the most part, Leonard and Perreault have been skating together with Andre Gasseau serving as the first line center while Stiga and Hagens have stayed together on the second line. But their third linemate has changed a few different times over the last four games. Brady Berard got the first look with the two highly skilled freshmen, then Dean Letourneau got a few shifts with them in the Beanpot final. Will Vote was listed as their linemate for both games in their series against UMass from this past weekend, but Jake Sondreal got a few shifts with them as well. And to be blunt about it, nothing has been working all that well.
Stiga had been on a real hot streak before Jellvik exited the lineup, with 12 points in 9 games to start the second half of the season, but he has just one point in the last four games without Jellvik, and that came on the power play where he was not skating with his normal linemates. James Hagens has just two points over those four games, though one was a nice even strength goal that he scored in Saturday night’s win. And sure, it’s only four games and that’s a small enough sample size that you can ignore it if you’d like, but just from a raw scoring perspective, Stiga and Hagens have been performing way under their full season pace since Jellvik went down.
Hopefully Jellvik is able to rejoin the lineup before too long, because I don’t know if there’s a long term solution in this lineup for the second line. I’ve loved everything I’ve seen from Brady Berard this season, but he seems better suited for his role on the fourth line where he can play a more straight forward and direct game. Will Vote has had some nice moments this year, but he only has nine points on the season and asking him to step up and produce consistently on the second line would be a lot. Same with Jake Sondreal, who has mostly looked good as a freshman but has a ways to go before he can be relied on as a legitimate scoring threat. And Dean Letourneau just isn’t close to being ready for that kind of responsibility. So the hope for now has to be that Jellvik comes back soon and that team can continue to get by in the short term if he is out a bit longer. A 2-2 record in his absence isn’t the end of the world, but they haven’t been playing a particularly clean brand of hockey recently, and it would be nice to get the lineup back to where everyone can slot in where they work best.
DEPTH SCORING HELPS OUT
While the second line has been slowed down a bit recently and even Ryan Leonard has cooled off a bit from his ridiculous pace from a few weeks ago, the Eagles have been getting some important goals from players farther down the depth chart. Going back to the Beanpot opener against Northeastern, BC has gotten goals from Lukas Gustafsson, Aram Minnetian, Connor Joyce, Will Vote, Gentry Shamburger, Mike Posma, and two from Eamon Powell. That’s a whole lot of production from players that we don’t typically expect to show up on the scoresheet every night.
The depth scoring really showed up a few weeks ago when BC played at New Hampshire and managed to escape with a 4-2 comeback win over the Wildcats. Vote, Shamburger, and Posma all scored in the third period after the Eagles had fallen behind to turn what could have been a tough loss into a really nice win. It feels like this comes up every season but it’s always worth pointing out how important it is to have players on the third and fourth lines who can step up and contribute when some of the bigger names might be having an off night. The third and fourth lines won BC a game that they very easily could have lost otherwise. That’s worth remembering as we come down the final stretch of the season with the Eagles looking to finish at the top of Hockey East.
POWER PLAY STRUGGLES CONTINUE
I keep waiting for BC’s power play to flip the switch and start scoring, but it’s getting to the point where that might just be a pipe dream. The Eagles have 13 goals on 79 power play chances this season, good for a 16.5 percent success rate. Last year they were right around 30 percent for the season before they ended the year at 28.8 percent. And sure, they lost two hugely important power play pieces in Will Smith and Cutter Gauthier but man it still feels like they should be a heck of a lot better than they are.
And it’s not like the coaching staff isn’t trying new things. Lukas Gustafsson got a look on the top unit and things looked better for a little while before that stopped working. The top unit has not included James Hagens for a few games now but they looked good to start the game on Friday night, generating some chances and scoring a goal on their second advantage of the game in the first period, but that was their only goal out of seven chances over the weekend. And they’re leaning a lot more on that top unit now too, because the second unit has a tough time getting set up and really never look all that dangerous even when they do.
Special teams are such a huge part of post season hockey, you make your job a whole lot harder if you can’t convert on the power play at a decent clip. There’s still technically a world in which things turn around in the next few weeks and the man advantage starks clicking, but it’s certainly hard to feel like that has a great chance of happening.
To close on a more optimistic special teams note, BC’s penalty kill is currently only down by a goal on the season so far, getting outscored 7-6 on their 84 penalty kills. If the power play remains a question mark for this team, the PK remains quite possibly their biggest strength