No. 1 Boston College men’s hockey went into its season finale against Merrimack on Saturday afternoon as champions. Not NCAA tournament champions—yet, anyway.
Rather, Maine’s Friday night loss to Massachusetts made BC the Hockey East regular-season champion for the second year in a row. But a regular-season championship will never be enough for a team that has spent most of its season ranked first in the nation.
The Eagles know that—or, at least, they played Saturday as if they did.
“There’s a lot of talk, especially with the way it worked out last night, that we were already league champs,” BC head coach Greg Brown said. “But we really give our leadership group a lot of credit. They really wanted to make sure we didn’t take a step backwards and kept our focus high and kept playing the right way. And right from the first shift, our older guys did that, and the rest of the team followed.”
Nine minutes into the second period, Eamon Powell sent the puck up the right side of the ice, where Gabe Perreault picked it up in stride. Perreault and Ryan Leonard found themselves in a 2-on-1 situation with just one Merrimack defender standing in the way of BC (26–6–2, 18–4–2 Hockey East) and a 3–0 lead.
Perreault took advantage, lighting the lamp with a laser that flew past the left shoulder of Merrimack (13–20–1, 9–14–1) netminder Nils Wallstrom, extending the Eagles’ lead to three goals.
“It was great to see tonight at the pace we played with, and obviously that’s going to be hugely important down the stretch because it’s going to be some fast, physical games against some good teams,” Powell said.
BC’s first goal of the game came 7:45 into play, when Leonard, who leads the nation in goals per game, scored his 29th of the season. James Hagens sent the puck to Leonard as he crossed in front of the crease, then Leonard sent the puck into Merrimack’s net top-shelf to give the Eagles their first lead of the afternoon in Conte Forum.
“[Leonard is] always playing hard because he is so competitive,” Brown said. “But his intent to play winning hockey all the time has really come into even more focus this last little while. You can see he’s changing at the right times, like all his details are dialed in right now, getting pucks deep when there’s not a play to be made.”
About five minutes later, Lukas Gustafsson showed off some intricate stick moves to get around his defender before delivering a picture-perfect dish to Teddy Stiga, who deflected the puck past Wallstrom to double BC’s lead.
The Eagles were not as dominant in the last couple of minutes of the first period, though, as Merrimack managed to keep BC in its d-zone for almost the entire time. The Warriors sent eight shots at Jacob Fowler, but three saves and two blocks later, BC headed into the first intermission with its 2–0 lead preserved.
“When we were loose in the first period, he was right there for us, like he has been all year,” Brown said.
Merrimack ended up leading in shots on goal through the second intermission but couldn’t get anything past Fowler, as the sophomore goaltender recorded 26 saves in his seventh shutout of the season and 10th of his career.
BC doesn’t rank outside the top 10 in the nation on most things—power-play percentage is one of the few exceptions to that. The Eagles ranked 40th in the nation going into Saturday’s game, with just 17 power-play goals on 91 attempts.
“Early on, it looked like we were holding pucks and trying to make that one heroic pass to create a chance,” Brown said. “And that’s really hard to do. At this level, you can have much more success with a lot of puck movement, a lot of tempo, getting pucks to the net and crashing.”
But the Eagles have seen improvement over the course of the season on one of their only weaknesses. That was evident 6:34 into the third period when Perreault scored his second goal of the day on the power play, sending the puck past the right post of Merrimack’s goal to put BC up 4–0.
“We’ve done a better job increasing the tempo and getting more good looks, more attacks on that,” Brown said.
The Eagles’ offense was clicking. Less than three minutes after Perreault’s second goal, Stiga followed suit. He turned defense into offense as he intercepted a Merrimack pass, took a couple of touches, then launched the puck past Wallstrom for his second and BC’s fifth goal of the day.
The Eagles’ final goal of the afternoon was fitting, given it was Senior Day for BC. Senior Connor Joyce scored on a rebound shot, which came off a Jake Sondreal miss, capping the scoring for BC.
“With playoffs around the corner, we still feel like we have another level we could get to,” Powell said. “This was our last game before next Saturday’s matchup, so I feel like it was a great test for us to keep ramping up … we obviously have high hopes and high expectations to go a long way.”
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