Breaking Down the 2017-18 Men’s Hockey Schedule
By Quinn Kelly
The BC Men’s Hockey schedule has been officially released ahead of what has set up to be a bit of a redemption season for the Eagles. A year removed from missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009, the Eagles will skate with a very young team, devoid of a senior class. It appears that BC has made the task of returning to postseason hockey a difficult get, with a schedule that hits hard right away, and doesn’t ease up over the course of a 34 game season.
The Eagles get things underway with a tough test at home on October 6th, hosting a budding rival in the Quinnipiac Bobcats. After being eliminated by QU in the Frozen Four semifinals in 2016, a scant Eagles squad, missing key players due to World Juniors duties, squandered an opportunity to seek a measure of revenge in the Three Rivers Classic last December, falling to the Bobcats 3-1. This will be the first time since the 2016 Frozen Four that these two teams meet at full strength, and despite the roster turnover, expect that the Eagles will be amped up to gain some retribution.
Quinnipiac poses a tough test right off the bat, and they only set the pace for an extremely tough opening month. The Eagles open their season with a stretch of seven straight opponents that finished in the top 25 last season. This stretch includes a visit from Wisconsin, a four-game road trip featuring the opening of Hockey East play with two trips to Providence and a weekend out at St Cloud State, and finally a visit from the reigning National Champion Denver. It’s quite possibly as a tough an October as a team could have, and it certainly shows that Jerry York commits to his philosophy of creating a tough schedule thru scheduling the best opponents, even in the face of what promises to be a weaker season for the Eagles.
The next seven game stretch is where BC enters the meat of its Hockey East schedule. To start out November, the Eags get a home-and-home with Merrimack, a midweek with UConn, a weekend in Vermont to face the Catamounts, and another full-road weekend with a trip to UNH and Northeastern on November 17th/18th. The three games with Merrimack and UConn will be extremely important. BC could potentially be coming into those games off a tough start after that opening month, and if they have any hopes of making something of the season, they will need to beat up on the bottom portion of Hockey East. A tie-loss season series with Merrimack, as we saw last year, will simply not cut it. The Eagles will also have to find a way to walk out of Burlington having taken at least two points from the Catamounts.
Past this is another tough mini-stretch, facing Harvard (Frozen Four semifinalist last year) before Thanksgiving, and polishing off the pre-winter break schedule with a home-and-home with BU and a visit from Northeastern. If you reach back to the Vermont series starting the 10th, its another run of 7 of 8 games versus top 25 opponents. In all, the Eagles have 20 games this season against opponents who finished in the top 25 last year, and 14 of those 20 games happen to be before the winter break.
The good news for the Eagles is that they thrived before the winter break last year. Before Thanksgiving last year, the Eagles jumped out to an 11-3-1 start. They finished the first half with a 13-6-1 record, looking like they were on pace to surprise the experts and roll into the NCAA Tournament. Of course, the team seemed to really falter with some late season fatigue, brought on by rolling with 10-11 freshmen starters who perhaps were not yet conditioned for the year long grind of college hockey. BC will have to rely on freshmen again, but can get away with only starting three first-years to start the season. If the returning sophomores have gotten themselves ready for a full season’s workload, and can use their talent to get out of the gates as hot as last year, the Eagles could set up nicely for a surprisingly good season.
Another perk for the Eagles is in how they start their second half. The Eagles will head out to Sin City as the class team in the Ice Vegas Tournament on January 5th/6th. This tournament is on the back end of the break, starting on the final day of the World Juniors tournament. This couples with the fact that the Eagles will be sending fewer players to the Juniors (expect the absence of Woll, the Mattilas, and freshman Aapeli Rasanen). Barring injury, BC will be well-equipped to handle the absence of these four for one or two games.
After the Ice Vegas tournament, the Eagles will be all Hockey East play for the second half, save for their two games in the Beanpot. BC will finish their Providence, UNH, UConn, and Northeastern season series, while also meeting UMass Amherst, UMass Lowell, and Maine for those series. The regular season finishes with a home game against Maine on February 24th, ahead of either a March 2nd or March 9th Hockey East Tournament start (depending on whether or not the Eagles can pick up a bye).
A final note on the schedule is that with the departure of Notre Dame from Hockey East, there will be more three-game season series in conference play for each team. For the Eagles, this means facing Providence, UConn, UMass Lowell, and Maine three times. While Maine and UConn may be welcomed for an extra game, a third with a Providence team that’s always tough is unfortunate, and a third with UML is damn near catastrophic. Over the past two years, the River Hawks have had the Eagles number, besting BC four games to one in the last five meetings, including the season ending defeat of the Eagles in the Hockey East Finals last year. That loss prevented the Eagles from reaching the NCAA Tournament, so the team may be thrilled to have the chance to stick it to UML three times this year, but for the wary fan it could really hurt the Eagles.
BC also has three games with Northeastern, though one will be a non-conference game in the opening round of the Beanpot. There is the potentiality for three with BU as well, if both they and the Eags find the same results in their opening Beanpot games.
Overall, there are an awful lot of good teams on BC’s schedule this year. It is a schedule that really lines up to be either a pitfall for an uncharacteristically weak Eagles team, or a moment to shine for a lot of young players, set to break through onto the national stage. It remains to be seen which will befall the Eagles, but its safe to say that if it is the latter, it will represent one of the finest jobs ever done by Coach Jerry York.
Stay tuned for WZBC Sports’s season preview blog for the upcoming hockey season!