On Thursday night, the Boston College men’s hockey team faced off against St Cloud State at Conte Forum for the first in a 2-game series this week. After losing to Alaska in their home opener, the Eagles are already fighting an uphill climb to NCAA tournament relevance. An out-of-conference series win against an NCHC team could help them come tournament time.
BC started this game against St Cloud right where they left off: committing penalties. After being penalized seven times against Alaska last week, the Eagles committed another two penalties in the first period of this game. They killed both and finally could settle into the game after about 10 minutes.
St Cloud was generating most of the pressure at that point, but things almost completely flipped when BC had a breakaway goal overturned for being offsides. They got a powerplay soon after that on a hit that sent Quinn Beauchesne to the locker room. But neither opportunity actually put them in the lead, and the teams skated into the first intermission tied 0-0. BC had a couple of good looks, but mostly looked shaky and was struggling to defend against St Cloud’s attack. SCSU led 10-7 in shots up to that point.
Whatever Greg Brown said in the locker room after that must’ve been pretty effective. Because BC came out blazing into the second period and scored almost immediately when Ryan Conmy found Oscar Hemming cutting towards the net. It then helped that SCSU couldn’t get out of their own way, committing three penalties of their own and giving BC a 5-on-3 opportunity. The Eagles scored on that, and then again full strength as the third period was just getting underway. Ryan Conmy and Oscar Hemming were the scorers on what was a big night for BC’s top line.
Boston College was much better throughout that entire stretch. St Cloud did get some offense going, and Louka Cloutier did give up a few juicy rebounds, but the Eagles defense held strong and they excelled at clearing the puck out of the zone as the game progressed.
The Huskies wouldn’t go down without a fight, though. They flipped the game as the third period went on, being more aggressive on loose pucks and getting shots off on Cloutier. Eventually one of those shots from back near the blue line went in, but it was called back for offsides and the score remained 3-0 with under ten minutes to play.
Another BC penalty and St Cloud powerplay followed quickly, but the Eagles killed it yet again. And then when SCSU went empty net with about seven minutes remaining, it didn’t take long for Will Vote to find Dean Letourneau down ice for the score. The game clock trickled down after that and the Eagles eventually came away with the 4-0 victory.
The two teams play again at Conte Forum on Saturday night at 7PM.