Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Brody Hannon
Trophy Season Rolls Forward As Regional Looms
March 26, 2024 | Men's Hockey, #ForBoston Files
Selection Sunday felt a bit anticlimactic compared to Saturday's dominating win.
Sunday's NCAA Tournament selection show offered a bit of an anticlimactic reaction from the Barber Room in Boston College's Yawkey Center. The room is normally reserved for bigger moments and larger media crowds, but the visual reaction of the Eagles' men's ice hockey team felt almost tepid towards the confirmation of the team's No. 1 overall seed in the national tournament.
BC looked like a team that expected to hear its name land in Providence, Rhode Island against the 16th-best qualifier, and nothing much changed with the Eagles' win over Boston University in the previous night's Hockey East championship. They'd been locked into the top seed for weeks, and the mathematical method for selecting the national tournament offered few surprises aside from how the committee navigated its rules for protecting as much bracket integrity as possible.
The Eagles were staying close to home, and their eyes were already fixated on the next exit signs on the road to the Frozen Four.
Saturday night's Hockey East championship matched No. 1 Boston College against its longtime archnemesis in No. 2 Boston University, but the game's larger truth bore zero repercussions beyond regional and local pride. Neither side gained an advantage to the all-important Pairwise Rankings with a win, so the idea of winning the Lamoriello Trophy boiled down to the weighted reaction of beating a longtime rival and gaining a measure of revenge for the Beanpot semifinal defeat currently standing as BC's last loss.
BU was the defending league champion that watched its name ascend to the TD Garden rafters when last season's overtime win over Merrimack brought the Terriers their first Hockey East victory in five years, but BC played for its first championship since Jerry York's last appearance in the game in 2019. The Eagles hadn't won the title since 2012, and the juicy prospect of ending the drought against BU served as a sweetening reminder to the three-peat that produced two national championships at the start of the last decade.
The sold-out crowd of 17,850 fans made it feel like a Stanley Cup championship, but BC's dominant performance over the wins over UMass and BU did little to enhance the drama surrounding the Minutemen's decimal-point small margin over Colorado College. There were other, more important matchups to sweat out, and the Terriers needed to keep a keen eye on those matchups in the aftermath of the loss to BC because adding UMass to the national tournament eventually sent the No. 2 team in the nation to a regional in Sioux Falls, South Dakota over a more local trip to Springfield's MassMutual Center.
"Twelve years is a long time," said freshman forward Will Smith. "We knew that coming into this game. It's amazing that we got one coming back to Chestnut Hill."
Smith was the No. 4 draft in last year's NHL Draft, but the product of the United States National Training Development Program grew up watching Cam Atkinson and the Hayes brothers win the 2008 and 2010 national championships alongside Brian Dumoulin and Chris Kreider. A third national championship in 2012 fell on Johnny Gaudreau's stick for the goal to end all goals against Ferris State, and the good times sandwiched a third Hockey East championship over Merrimack's Cinderella story during the 2010-2011 season.
Nobody thought the good times would ever end, but losing to Boston University in 2013 preceded a three-game loss to Notre Dame after the Fighting Irish joined Hockey East for the 2013-2014 season. Three more regular season championships followed from 2016-2018, but playoff semifinal losses to Northeastern and Boston University bookended the championship game loss to UMass-Lowell before the drought began in earnest.
Smith's four-goal, Texas-sized hat trick helped exorcize those demons during a night in which BC completely defanged and declawed the Terrier defense. Nothing worked for BU, and even Macklin Celebrini's Hobey Baker candidacy took a shot after Cutter Gauthier and Gabe Perrault built a 5-1 lead with Smith's initial hat trick.
"If you're going to be successful, you have to be strong in both areas," said head coach Greg Brown during an ESPN interview on Sunday night. "[Assistant coach] Mike Ayres works with the PK, and if they haven't been first, they've been top-five the whole season. [The players] do a great job, and they really read each other well. If there are breakdowns, they figure out where the breakdown is happening, and they adjust very quickly. When they haven't been able to block a shot, Jacob [Fowler] has been outstanding in net for us."
Fowler destroyed counterpart Mathieu Caron in the head-to-head battle on Saturday night and entered the tournament as a possible Mike Richter Award winner, but everyone understands that every accolade is secondary to the road emerging for the No. 1 seed in the tournament. No No. 1 overall seed has won the championship since Denver defeated Minnesota-Duluth in the 2017 Frozen Four in Chicago, and four of the last ten No. 1 seeds missed the Frozen Four after losing in regional action.Â
Results aren't an indicator of anything in the national tournament, and the top seeded teams' failures reflect the delicacy associated with the single-game elimination tournament. Last year's No. 1 seed, Minnesota, scored 19 goals in its three wins over Canisius, St. Cloud and Boston University, but the 3-2 overtime loss to Quinnipiac sent the trophy back to Connecticut instead of the Twin Cities. The year before, No. 1 Michigan scored 12 goals in its regional wins American International and Quinnipiac, but the 3-2 loss to Denver eliminated the Wolverines before the national championship game.
Not every team faces down what happened to North Dakota when the Fighting Hawks lost to Minnesota-Duluth in five overtimes during the COVID-impacted tournament in 2021, but St. Cloud's dueling No. 1 seeds were derailed by first game losses to the No. 16 team in the tournament. On both occasions, AIC and Air Force won their way into the field by winning the Atlantic Hockey Tournament, a situation that's remarkably similar to the way Michigan Tech won its way into the field after starting the CCHA Tournament as the No. 3 seed.
"I was fortunate to watch [Jerry York] do it for 14 years," Brown told ESPN, "and as his assistant coach, I had a good head start on how to manage a big freshman class. The kids are great. They came in so eager to learn and to be a part of the team [that] it wasn't a tough transition [to the postseason]."
BC plays Michigan Tech on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island. The game can be seen on national television on ESPNU with streaming available on the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps. Radio broadcast is also available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM.
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BC looked like a team that expected to hear its name land in Providence, Rhode Island against the 16th-best qualifier, and nothing much changed with the Eagles' win over Boston University in the previous night's Hockey East championship. They'd been locked into the top seed for weeks, and the mathematical method for selecting the national tournament offered few surprises aside from how the committee navigated its rules for protecting as much bracket integrity as possible.
The Eagles were staying close to home, and their eyes were already fixated on the next exit signs on the road to the Frozen Four.
Saturday night's Hockey East championship matched No. 1 Boston College against its longtime archnemesis in No. 2 Boston University, but the game's larger truth bore zero repercussions beyond regional and local pride. Neither side gained an advantage to the all-important Pairwise Rankings with a win, so the idea of winning the Lamoriello Trophy boiled down to the weighted reaction of beating a longtime rival and gaining a measure of revenge for the Beanpot semifinal defeat currently standing as BC's last loss.
BU was the defending league champion that watched its name ascend to the TD Garden rafters when last season's overtime win over Merrimack brought the Terriers their first Hockey East victory in five years, but BC played for its first championship since Jerry York's last appearance in the game in 2019. The Eagles hadn't won the title since 2012, and the juicy prospect of ending the drought against BU served as a sweetening reminder to the three-peat that produced two national championships at the start of the last decade.
The sold-out crowd of 17,850 fans made it feel like a Stanley Cup championship, but BC's dominant performance over the wins over UMass and BU did little to enhance the drama surrounding the Minutemen's decimal-point small margin over Colorado College. There were other, more important matchups to sweat out, and the Terriers needed to keep a keen eye on those matchups in the aftermath of the loss to BC because adding UMass to the national tournament eventually sent the No. 2 team in the nation to a regional in Sioux Falls, South Dakota over a more local trip to Springfield's MassMutual Center.
"Twelve years is a long time," said freshman forward Will Smith. "We knew that coming into this game. It's amazing that we got one coming back to Chestnut Hill."
Smith was the No. 4 draft in last year's NHL Draft, but the product of the United States National Training Development Program grew up watching Cam Atkinson and the Hayes brothers win the 2008 and 2010 national championships alongside Brian Dumoulin and Chris Kreider. A third national championship in 2012 fell on Johnny Gaudreau's stick for the goal to end all goals against Ferris State, and the good times sandwiched a third Hockey East championship over Merrimack's Cinderella story during the 2010-2011 season.
Nobody thought the good times would ever end, but losing to Boston University in 2013 preceded a three-game loss to Notre Dame after the Fighting Irish joined Hockey East for the 2013-2014 season. Three more regular season championships followed from 2016-2018, but playoff semifinal losses to Northeastern and Boston University bookended the championship game loss to UMass-Lowell before the drought began in earnest.
Smith's four-goal, Texas-sized hat trick helped exorcize those demons during a night in which BC completely defanged and declawed the Terrier defense. Nothing worked for BU, and even Macklin Celebrini's Hobey Baker candidacy took a shot after Cutter Gauthier and Gabe Perrault built a 5-1 lead with Smith's initial hat trick.
"If you're going to be successful, you have to be strong in both areas," said head coach Greg Brown during an ESPN interview on Sunday night. "[Assistant coach] Mike Ayres works with the PK, and if they haven't been first, they've been top-five the whole season. [The players] do a great job, and they really read each other well. If there are breakdowns, they figure out where the breakdown is happening, and they adjust very quickly. When they haven't been able to block a shot, Jacob [Fowler] has been outstanding in net for us."
Fowler destroyed counterpart Mathieu Caron in the head-to-head battle on Saturday night and entered the tournament as a possible Mike Richter Award winner, but everyone understands that every accolade is secondary to the road emerging for the No. 1 seed in the tournament. No No. 1 overall seed has won the championship since Denver defeated Minnesota-Duluth in the 2017 Frozen Four in Chicago, and four of the last ten No. 1 seeds missed the Frozen Four after losing in regional action.Â
Results aren't an indicator of anything in the national tournament, and the top seeded teams' failures reflect the delicacy associated with the single-game elimination tournament. Last year's No. 1 seed, Minnesota, scored 19 goals in its three wins over Canisius, St. Cloud and Boston University, but the 3-2 overtime loss to Quinnipiac sent the trophy back to Connecticut instead of the Twin Cities. The year before, No. 1 Michigan scored 12 goals in its regional wins American International and Quinnipiac, but the 3-2 loss to Denver eliminated the Wolverines before the national championship game.
Not every team faces down what happened to North Dakota when the Fighting Hawks lost to Minnesota-Duluth in five overtimes during the COVID-impacted tournament in 2021, but St. Cloud's dueling No. 1 seeds were derailed by first game losses to the No. 16 team in the tournament. On both occasions, AIC and Air Force won their way into the field by winning the Atlantic Hockey Tournament, a situation that's remarkably similar to the way Michigan Tech won its way into the field after starting the CCHA Tournament as the No. 3 seed.
"I was fortunate to watch [Jerry York] do it for 14 years," Brown told ESPN, "and as his assistant coach, I had a good head start on how to manage a big freshman class. The kids are great. They came in so eager to learn and to be a part of the team [that] it wasn't a tough transition [to the postseason]."
BC plays Michigan Tech on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in Providence, Rhode Island. The game can be seen on national television on ESPNU with streaming available on the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps. Radio broadcast is also available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield, locally in Boston on WEEI 850 AM.
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