The Boston College men’s hockey team saw their winning streak come to an end on Saturday night, losing to Maine 3-0 in the second game of their weekend series. This was a bit of a dud of a game for the Eagles, especially after their impressive performance to start the weekend on Friday night. They were chasing the game almost immediately and even though they didn’t necessarily play terribly, they never really looked like they were going to get back into it as the night went on.
BC fell behind almost immediately in this one, letting up the first goal of the night just over a minute and a half into the game. Maine’s goal came off of a terrible turnover in BC’s own end, when a breakout pass from below the goal line went right to a Maine player in the slot. The ensuing shot beat Louka Cloutier up high to give Maine an early 1-0 lead. They doubled their lead with a shorthanded goal just about 10 minutes later, when BC got a bit lazy defending a shorthanded rush and left a Maine player uncovered on the back post for an easy tap in goal and a 2-0 lead that held up through the rest of the opening period.
The two teams skated to a scoreless second period, but it was not for a total lack of chances at either end. BC probably had the better of the play in the middle period, with James Hagens in particular looking dangerous pretty much every time he stepped on the ice. The Eagles did manage to generate a few good scoring chances in the offensive zone, but they weren’t able to capitalize on any of them like they did on Friday night. At the other end, Cloutier wasn’t called on often, but he did make two massive sprawling saves to keep the deficit at two goals after 40 minutes of play.
Maine put this one out of reach with 11:07 left in the regulation, scoring off of a rebound in the slot to make it a 3-0 game. That was followed a few minutes later by a really scary moment when a Maine skater went into the boards hard and had to be stretchered off of the ice following a long delay. BC had a few really good looks while shorthanded after they took a penalty right after play resumed, but they remained unable to bury any of them and dropped this one by a score of 3-0.
The loss brought about an end to BC’s five-game winning streak and dropped their overall record to 7-5-1. This feels like one of those games that you kind of just want to move on from as quickly as possible. There was never that much energy in the building or on the ice and you could feel that pretty early on. BC will have a chance to bounce back on home ice on Friday afternoon when they welcome Notre Dame for a Black Friday matinee game at 1 PM.
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