{"id":30452,"date":"2022-02-25T15:43:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T20:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=30452"},"modified":"2022-02-28T15:47:32","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T20:47:32","slug":"mens-hockey-bu-takes-on-bc-in-home-and-home-with-pairwise-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2022\/02\/25\/mens-hockey-bu-takes-on-bc-in-home-and-home-with-pairwise-implications\/","title":{"rendered":"Men’s Hockey: BU takes on BC in home-and-home as regular season winds down"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bobby Serafin<\/em><\/p>\n

With the last two weeks of the Hockey East season approaching, Boston University (17-10-3, 11-6-3 HE) plays for the first time since their dramatic 1-0 victory in the Beanpot. While they defeated one rival, Northeeastern, in the tournament final, BU now faces an even bigger one this weekend, taking on Boston College (11-16-5, 6-11-3 HE).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt bodes for a good tight game,\u201d said BU head coach Albie O\u2019Connell about the home and home against the Eagles. While the rivalry between these two Boston based programs has yielded close scores over the years, the Terriers haven\u2019t won at Conte Forum since 2017. Since that win, BU has beaten BC in regulation just once in nine tries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All-time, the BU is 44\u201355-12 against the BC, but the rivalry has seemingly gone back and forth over the years, with both teams having impressive runs against the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the Terriers are just 2-5-3 against the Eagles in their last 10 games, this year is a different story. BU started the season out poorly, which was concluded by a two game sweep at Northern Michigan and a loss in Red Hot Hockey versus Cornell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Northern Michigan weekend was definitely an eye opener,” O’Connell said. “We kind of reset. \u2026 We had to work on some details. It was a key moment for putting us in a better spot.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

O’Connell has experienced plenty of adversity in his fourth year as coach; there has been every sort of obstacle thrown his way. First he has multiple key players, such as Matt Brown and Ethan Phillips, out to start the season. Next, he lost Tyler Boucher, who was supposed to be a big part of the team going forward, to a pro contract with the Ottawa Senators.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the Olympics take his star goalie and force him to roll with a backup for the Beanpot. That backup turned out to be a major difference between the pipes. Vinny Duplessis, a sophomore out of Quebec City, put up a shutout in the Beanpot final to give BU its first title since 2015.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a huge boost for the group,\u201d said O\u2019Connell. The goalie hasn\u2019t been the only person kicking it up a notch for this Terriers group. Logan Cockerill, in recent weeks, has provided massive amounts of leadership for this otherwise young group.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur captain is probably playing the best he\u2019s played in a long time,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. Cockerill\u2019s stellar play, in addition to the newly formed chemistry between Ethan Phillips, Jay O\u2019Brien, and Luke Tuch has BU firing on all cylinders.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of guys feeling good about how they\u2019re playing right now,\u201d O\u2019Connell said when talking about his team\u2019s surge in confidence over the last several months. Since Red Hot Hockey, the Terriers have won 13 of their last 15 games and come into Friday\u2019s showdown with seven straight victories.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BC, on the other hand, started off the season hot. They were ranked in the NCAA\u2019s top 10 going into November, but since then have fallen out of even the race for Hockey East, let alone the NCAA tournament. Once 10-6-3 overall, the Eagles have since lost 10 of their last 13 games.<\/span><\/p>\n

BC will still show plenty of fight, and so will their fan base, which will show up in bunches for this rivalry game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always an exciting crowd. You\u2019re kind of just going out and playing,\u201d O\u2019Connell said about the BC fans.<\/p>\n

In addition to the fans, the Eagles gained three players back from the Olympics recently who factor heavily in their play. They first get back their top two point producers in seniors Marc McLaughlin and Jack McBain. McLaughlin leads the team in goals with 19.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

McBain, in contrast, hasn\u2019t played as many games as McLaughlin, but has the highest points per game out of any Eagles player with 1.33. Finally, the Eagles receive their leader on the blue line in Drew Helleson.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In goal for BC will most likely be Eric Dop, the graduate student out of Lewis Center, Ohio. The Bowling Green transfer has put up below average stats on the season.\u00a0<\/span>In his 27 starts this year, Dop has earned a record of 8-13-4 with a sub .900 save percentage and a goals-against average over 3.10\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For BU, it\u2019s still up in the air who will be the starter for the first of this two game set. While Duplessis has been key of late, Olympian Drew Commesso has been the workhorse all season long and needs work before postseason play.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“We gotta see where each of their heads are at. We\u2019re comfortable with either guy going. We will talk to our goalie coach,\u201d said O\u2019Connell when asked about the starter for Friday. It\u2019s a good problem to have for BU, as Commesso has cemented himself as a top 25 in the NCAA this year while Duplessis has a GAA of 1.59 in his eight starts on the year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Terriers are a balanced group going forward, but offensively they\u2019re oddly enough led by a defenseman in points. Dom Fensore, the team\u2019s representative for the Hobey Baker Award, has been lighting it up in his junior season. The former U.S. NTDP player has four goals to go with an impressive 21 assists for 25 points in 30 games.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, O\u2019Brien is the man who paces this group in points per game with 20 points in 19 games (9g, 11a) . The former first round pick of the Philadelphia Flyers has found his game in the second half of the season. O\u2019Brien and Fensore are a part of the junior class for BU that contains seven of the team\u2019s top eight scorers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Friday’s game at Chestnut Hill was postponed to 4 p.m. on Sunday after rescheduling with BC’s women’s team and Maine, so look for the Terriers to start fast on Saturday after being off for 12 days. Given the long break, the Terriers have had plenty of time to fine tune their game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to shoot pucks off of face-off wins. We had traffic, but we could\u2019ve found more pucks to the net,\u201d said O\u2019Connell.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Saturday\u2019s puck drop is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Agganis Arena for the Terriers final home game of the season. Both games, as expected, will be broadcasted on NESN.<\/span><\/p>\n

Featured Image by Patrick Donnelly<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bobby Serafin With the last two weeks of the Hockey East season approaching, Boston University (17-10-3, 11-6-3 HE) plays for the first time since their dramatic 1-0 victory in the Beanpot. While they defeated one rival, Northeeastern, in the tournament final, BU now faces an even bigger one this weekend, taking on Boston College […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19883,"featured_media":29509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1026,1028,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30457,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30452\/revisions\/30457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}