Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Brody Hannon
Malone's Force And Will Leads Eagles Back To Garden
March 18, 2024 | Men's Hockey, #ForBoston Files
The Cornell graduate transfer was battle-tested for heroism last weekend.
The third period of Saturday night's Hockey East quarterfinal between top-ranked, top-seeded Boston College and eighth-seeded Connecticut left Eagles fans bewildered with frustration after the first two periods bled into the Huskies' three-goal comeback in the first six minutes of the third period. The postseason's annual trip to TD Garden hung in the balance, and the single-elimination nature of the playoffs gave the conference's southwestern-most member all the confidence it needed to perform a miraculous upset.
Nervous energy rippled through Conte Forum, but Jack Malone stood in front of his bench with the proverbial ice water running through his veins. He'd been on a No. 1 team in the country during his first season at Cornell when COVID-19 canceled the entire postseason, and he spent the next year in junior hockey after the Big Red opted out of college athletics with the rest of the Ivy League. By the time his team returned to the new world, Cornell found itself out of the tournament in 2022 before advancing to the East Regional Final with a 2-0 shutout over Denver, the No. 4 overall seed.
His heartbreak had built leather-tough skin onto his hockey-playing experience, and he used a media break opportunity to remind the team of ultra-talented and college playoff-inexperienced teammates exactly what to do in that situation. As the media timeout ended, he time-released a controlled outburst with a goal that padded a win for the ages at Conte Forum with a 5-4 decision that sent the Eagles to TD Garden for a matchup against fifth-seeded UMass.
"There are a lot of things that we can do better," said head coach Greg Brown. "We got away with a win, and we'll learn those lessons. We'll show them stuff that we've done better in other games, but at this time of the year, really, it's win and advance as ugly as it has to be. So huge credit to the guys, especially after UConn stormed back to the tie game. They were carrying the play, but the guys dug deep to get that last goal and kill that penalty at the end."
Hockey East's single-elimination requires teams to ready their best possible performance for every game, but Connecticut looked like a cautionary matchup from the first moments after the Huskies' 4-1 first round win over Vermont. They'd absorbed lumps over the last month of the season when they lost five out of six games with sweeps at the hands of UMass and Boston University, but a split against Northeastern and a last-game win over the Catamounts regained enough momentum to clinch a home game at the Toscano Family Ice Forum.
They possessed a top-heavy lineup and a first round draft pick in the Nashville Predators' Matthew Wood, but BC's depth chart, when healthy, possessed the well-rounded and raw ability to chop through UConn with its cumulative numbers. Removing Gabe Perrault due to an injury didn't change that, but top lines led by the No. 15 overall selection generated a comeback that put BC both on its heels and in need of a spark.
"Their forecheck was really the biggest problem for us over the last 50 minutes," Brown said. "They kept getting in behind us, and they did a great job of keeping us in our zone. I thought we were trying to make a lot of stretch passes, a lot of long passes, rather than [utilizing] close puck support, which is [used] when we're playing well. We might have one stretch, but everyone else is closer to the puck, and we're moving it quicker. So credit to them but we had to be a little bit smarter on our breakouts."
Malone stepped into that void by rallying the team, and he later jumped to the forefront of the Eagles' neutral zone weave as he slashed through UConn's blue-line backcheck. It was almost by sheer grit and determination that he split two defenders, and as the puck came to his stick, the fates conjoined to ignite BC with his second goal of the night.
"Obviously you want to contribute in one way or another every night," Malone said, "and I think we have a lot of guys that do that, whether it was on the scoresheet or not. There are guys that are going to give every ounce of effort that they have to give every night, every shift, every time that they jump over the boards, and we know that they're going to give us a spark and some energy."
"We had some good shifts in the third to try and turn the momentum," Brown said. "I give Jack a ton of credit [because] he was the vocal guy on the bench and leading by example on the ice. He had three periods of great hockey, and it's probably fitting that he's the one who got the goal because he was the driver for us all night. I'm very happy for him to have a game like that."
His goal didn't stop UConn's overarching charge, but the reinvigorated Eagles broke from their nascent slumber and killed a 6-on-4, empty-net power play in the last two minutes to advance to TD Garden's semifinal round and continue a trend of top seeds advancing to the Garden. A No. 1 seed had never missed advancing since Hockey East eliminated quarterfinal best-of-three series in the aftermath of COVID-19, but the win echoed a one-goal decision from the first year of the format when Northeastern avoided a setback with a 3-2 win over BC.
Those Huskies eventually lost their semifinal game to fourth-seeded Connecticut, but BC's bid to become the second-straight No. 1 seed playing for a conference championship requires a heavy-handed matchup against a UMass team still bidding for the national tournament after its win over fourth-seeded Providence. The two teams initially received a bye to their one-game series as the only matchup not set by first round decisions, but their placement near the college hockey Pairwise Rankings bubble turned the 3-1 win by the Minutemen into an eliminator-type game.
The Friars had been tenuously sitting around the No. 10 and No. 11 spot for most of the year, but a late season slide and the loss last Saturday dropped them clear out of the tournament at the No. 17 spot. With both the Atlantic Hockey and CCHA champions set to occupy the bottom two slots in the national tournament in some capacity, the cut-line for the NCAA Tournament moved to the three-way tie at No. 14 between Colorado College, Cornell and St. Cloud.
UMass moved to No. 12, but with the school's hosting status locked into the Springfield regional, it's likely that the semifinal game would have a downstream effect on Boston University's ability to play somewhere in New England for the national tournament. Even with a loss, BC would remain No. 1 for the national tournament, but determining between the MassMutual Center and Providence's Amica Mutual Pavilion is dependent on whether or not the Minutemen slot into a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.
"There's no trap in the semifinals of Hockey East," Brown said. "We know that they're a great team, and we had hard-fought games in both [earlier games]. They have a successful program, they know how to win, so we know it'll be a huge battle for us and we're going to have to be at our best."
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Nervous energy rippled through Conte Forum, but Jack Malone stood in front of his bench with the proverbial ice water running through his veins. He'd been on a No. 1 team in the country during his first season at Cornell when COVID-19 canceled the entire postseason, and he spent the next year in junior hockey after the Big Red opted out of college athletics with the rest of the Ivy League. By the time his team returned to the new world, Cornell found itself out of the tournament in 2022 before advancing to the East Regional Final with a 2-0 shutout over Denver, the No. 4 overall seed.
His heartbreak had built leather-tough skin onto his hockey-playing experience, and he used a media break opportunity to remind the team of ultra-talented and college playoff-inexperienced teammates exactly what to do in that situation. As the media timeout ended, he time-released a controlled outburst with a goal that padded a win for the ages at Conte Forum with a 5-4 decision that sent the Eagles to TD Garden for a matchup against fifth-seeded UMass.
"There are a lot of things that we can do better," said head coach Greg Brown. "We got away with a win, and we'll learn those lessons. We'll show them stuff that we've done better in other games, but at this time of the year, really, it's win and advance as ugly as it has to be. So huge credit to the guys, especially after UConn stormed back to the tie game. They were carrying the play, but the guys dug deep to get that last goal and kill that penalty at the end."
Hockey East's single-elimination requires teams to ready their best possible performance for every game, but Connecticut looked like a cautionary matchup from the first moments after the Huskies' 4-1 first round win over Vermont. They'd absorbed lumps over the last month of the season when they lost five out of six games with sweeps at the hands of UMass and Boston University, but a split against Northeastern and a last-game win over the Catamounts regained enough momentum to clinch a home game at the Toscano Family Ice Forum.
They possessed a top-heavy lineup and a first round draft pick in the Nashville Predators' Matthew Wood, but BC's depth chart, when healthy, possessed the well-rounded and raw ability to chop through UConn with its cumulative numbers. Removing Gabe Perrault due to an injury didn't change that, but top lines led by the No. 15 overall selection generated a comeback that put BC both on its heels and in need of a spark.
"Their forecheck was really the biggest problem for us over the last 50 minutes," Brown said. "They kept getting in behind us, and they did a great job of keeping us in our zone. I thought we were trying to make a lot of stretch passes, a lot of long passes, rather than [utilizing] close puck support, which is [used] when we're playing well. We might have one stretch, but everyone else is closer to the puck, and we're moving it quicker. So credit to them but we had to be a little bit smarter on our breakouts."
Malone stepped into that void by rallying the team, and he later jumped to the forefront of the Eagles' neutral zone weave as he slashed through UConn's blue-line backcheck. It was almost by sheer grit and determination that he split two defenders, and as the puck came to his stick, the fates conjoined to ignite BC with his second goal of the night.
"Obviously you want to contribute in one way or another every night," Malone said, "and I think we have a lot of guys that do that, whether it was on the scoresheet or not. There are guys that are going to give every ounce of effort that they have to give every night, every shift, every time that they jump over the boards, and we know that they're going to give us a spark and some energy."
"We had some good shifts in the third to try and turn the momentum," Brown said. "I give Jack a ton of credit [because] he was the vocal guy on the bench and leading by example on the ice. He had three periods of great hockey, and it's probably fitting that he's the one who got the goal because he was the driver for us all night. I'm very happy for him to have a game like that."
His goal didn't stop UConn's overarching charge, but the reinvigorated Eagles broke from their nascent slumber and killed a 6-on-4, empty-net power play in the last two minutes to advance to TD Garden's semifinal round and continue a trend of top seeds advancing to the Garden. A No. 1 seed had never missed advancing since Hockey East eliminated quarterfinal best-of-three series in the aftermath of COVID-19, but the win echoed a one-goal decision from the first year of the format when Northeastern avoided a setback with a 3-2 win over BC.
Those Huskies eventually lost their semifinal game to fourth-seeded Connecticut, but BC's bid to become the second-straight No. 1 seed playing for a conference championship requires a heavy-handed matchup against a UMass team still bidding for the national tournament after its win over fourth-seeded Providence. The two teams initially received a bye to their one-game series as the only matchup not set by first round decisions, but their placement near the college hockey Pairwise Rankings bubble turned the 3-1 win by the Minutemen into an eliminator-type game.
The Friars had been tenuously sitting around the No. 10 and No. 11 spot for most of the year, but a late season slide and the loss last Saturday dropped them clear out of the tournament at the No. 17 spot. With both the Atlantic Hockey and CCHA champions set to occupy the bottom two slots in the national tournament in some capacity, the cut-line for the NCAA Tournament moved to the three-way tie at No. 14 between Colorado College, Cornell and St. Cloud.
UMass moved to No. 12, but with the school's hosting status locked into the Springfield regional, it's likely that the semifinal game would have a downstream effect on Boston University's ability to play somewhere in New England for the national tournament. Even with a loss, BC would remain No. 1 for the national tournament, but determining between the MassMutual Center and Providence's Amica Mutual Pavilion is dependent on whether or not the Minutemen slot into a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.
"There's no trap in the semifinals of Hockey East," Brown said. "We know that they're a great team, and we had hard-fought games in both [earlier games]. They have a successful program, they know how to win, so we know it'll be a huge battle for us and we're going to have to be at our best."
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