Welcome To #ThePath: BC Women’s Hockey Edition

Oh, you BC Sickos. You’re a little crazy, you’re a lot dedicated, and your hearts are generally in the right place. As a founding member of the Boston College Women’s Hockey Sicko Society, I can definitely relate.

Hoops sickos and football sickos and any other sickos out there: I would like to welcome you aboard the BC Women’s Hockey hype train, which is just about to pull out of the station. The tracks lead down #ThePath to a Hockey East championship, an NCAA tournament berth, and beyond and all are welcome with the rest of us in the party car.

Let’s get you up to speed. Coach Crowley’s Eagles have had a pretty strange year, with an 0-4 start against #2 Wisconsin and #3 Clarkson followed by a 12-3-2 blitz through the slog of the middle part of the season that saw BC climb all the way to the top of the Hockey East standings — a pleasant surprise given their #6 position in the preseason coaches’ poll. Unfortunately, a few injuries and illnesses kicked off a bit of a second half tumble with the Eagles ending the regular season with a 2-6-5 run (yes, 5 ties) and falling to the 4th seed for the Hockey East tournament.

The league has been all over the place this year, which despite the rough end to the regular season gives a certain “Why not us?” flavor to the postseason. The Eagles went to overtime in the Hockey East quarterfinals on Friday night, but with no ties in the playoffs, it was just a matter of time until BC got a moment of brilliance from one of its freshman stars, Sammy Taber.

And so that brings us to our present position along #ThePath: #4 Boston College takes on #1 UConn this Wednesday night at 7pm in Storrs, CT in the Hockey East semifinals.

If the Eagles playing the #1 seed makes you nervous, it shouldn’t. Case in point number one: UConn has not beaten the Eagles this season. BC went 2-0-1 against the Huskies this year, collecting with the tie one of the few shootout wins the Eagles have pulled out this season. There’s going to be plenty of belief in the locker room.

But consider also that while UConn’s end to the regular season was better than BC’s, they didn’t exactly set the world on fire. The Huskies finished the regular season with a sweep of Boston University ( ), but prior to that lost 3-0 to a slumping Vermont team, took two wins off the teams at the bottom of the conference standings, and went to overtime in their four games prior to that — all against teams right around BC in the standings. Not a miserable run by any means, but nothing to suggest that this game is much worse than a coin flip for a BC team that has some momentum after a big overtime win in the quarterfinals and already knows they can win.

Overall, the league has beaten itself up this year, with no teams getting into the NCAA tournament as an at-large. All of these games are there for the taking.

So let’s move forward along the next step of #ThePath: The Hockey East championship game. Once the Eagles beat UConn, they’ll face off against the winner of the Northeastern vs. New Hampshire semifinal. That’s where the script gets flipped: Unlike with UConn, the Eagles have not beaten either UNH or NU this season, going a combined 0-5-1 against the two teams, with the one tie (to UNH) a shootout loss.

If the Eagles playing two teams they have not beaten all year for a championship also makes you nervous, it also shouldn’t. It’s incredibly difficult for one team to beat another team four times — especially teams that are crammed into the same small space in the rankings. I doubt either team will be all that thrilled to have to face a BC team coming off an overtime win and a win over the top seed.

So let’s give Sammy Taber another overtime winner to give the Eagles the trophy. That would put BC in the national tournament for the first time since 2021, locking in as the #10 seed out of 11 (I know, it’s a weird bracket). That would put BC matched up with the #7 seeded team (either St, Lawrence or Cornell) in the regional of the #2 seed (either Wisconsin or Clarkson).

It goes without saying that the Eagles can take down an eastern foe in SLU or the Big Red at a neutral site, so obviously we can grant BC a hard fought dub. Let’s just move on to the quarterfinal against the #2 seed.

Either Clarkson or Wisconsin as the team standing in BC’s way of a Frozen Four berth would be a blessing. The Eagle Revenge Tour would be in full swing as the Golden Knights and the Badgers are the two teams that tripped up BC in the 0-4-0 start to the season. The Eagles looked quite competitive against Clarkson in their games, and actually led the Badgers in the second period in their third game of the year.

Clarkson would be a tough but beatable team. But let’s say the Eagles catch a break and get to play Wisconsin. Man oh man — the hate runs deep between these two programs. They’re an evil empire if there ever was one. Boston College would be riding a wave of angry emotion against those frauds. I wish the Badgers good luck in this scenario because boy would they need it.

So regardless of who BC beats to get to the Frozen Four, the women’s hockey world will officially be on notice from that point on. It’s hard to predict upsets and who will be left this deep into the tournament, but assuming top seeds are doing well, it’ll either be the team BC didn’t face in the quarterfinal of Wisconsin or Clarkson, or possibly Colgate. We already know BC can take down either of the first two. And let’s be honest, is anyone really going to be scared of Colgate? Has Colgate ever won anything in any sport? They’re Colgate! 9 out of 10 dentists would be picking the Eagles in that matchup.

The fact is, once BC gets into the Frozen Four, it’s title or bust, and the semifinal is going to be an afterthought when we’re all at the duck boat parade.

That brings us to the national championship. You know it, I know it, and the rest of the women’s college hockey world knows it: The Eagles are on a collision course with the consensus top team in the land, Ohio State. The stories write themselves at this point. Grad students Cayla Barnes and Hannah Bilka took their BC diploma and went out west to try to win a national title in their COVID 5th year of eligibility. The addition of these two international superstars to the Buckeye roster has certainly helped Ohio State in their smash through the season, but by this point, it will have been written in the stars that the Eagles are a team of destiny. BC’s blue collar blitz through the postseason will have made Coach Crowley’s squad an unstoppable force, and the added emotion behind playing against two of BC’s best players from last season for a shot at the title will be more than enough for the Eagles to come away the convincing winners.

#ThePath is right there. It’s begging for us all to take a stroll. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of delusion that you need to allow yourself in order to keep the faith. I know all you Sickos out there know this. #ThePath is a vibe. It’s about belief. But screw it, let’s just go out and win everything. We’re Eagles. If you don’t limit yourself with bad thoughts, you can fly.