Drop The Puck: Boston College vs. Denver

Legacies are never defined by a single outcome or a single game. The numbers related to players and hockey teams in particular are developed within a months-long quest to play an entire season, so referring to a game like it's some island of relevancy eradicates or overlooks too many factors and too many data points. The very idea that a judgment is cast from that one piece of information, at least to me, is therefore insane compared to the possibility or conversation of what defines a team's greatness.

The theory is that it's impossible to judge a team from a single moment, but any team that reaches a national championship forever alters its legacy by whether or not it wins or loses the last game of the season. Winning and losing, scoring goals, saving pucks, earning points - it all builds the road that reaches the last game of the season, and it's that last game - the last battle between a team and its final boss - that forever finishes the story associated with one team's historic quest.

No matter how anyone slices the conversation, that's always the starting point, and on Saturday night, the prospect of turning Boston College from good to great to legendary reaches its conclusion when the Eagles face Denver in the 2024 Frozen Four national championship game.

"We're very happy to be here," said head coach Greg Brown. "It's not an easy road [with] so many quality hockey teams in college hockey. To be one of the two teams left standing at the end is a great compliment to these guys, how much work they've put in, the effort for the entire season, all summer. They do so many things, they do it willingly and without knowing if they'll be rewarded with the opportunity to play in this game."

BC started the story with wild expectations after earning the No. 5 national ranking in the first USCHO.com poll, but anyone who watched the Eagles over the last two seasons approached that ranking with a bit of trepidation. Pardoning a double-negative, that didn't mean that people didn't believe in BC, but the factual evidence needed proof before unseating Boston University, last year's Hockey East champion and the preseason No. 1 team in the nation, as the best team coming out of the eastern leagues. Good teams still littered college hockey, and nobody knew if the Eagles could gel quick enough to allow their ultra-talented freshmen to pass teams like UMass, North Dakota, Michigan, Minnesota, or Quinnipiac.

People thought BC would be good, but every conference had good teams. The NCHC, for example, had three teams in the top-10 when the season started, and the number of Big Ten and Hockey East teams in the top-20 illustrated the respect offered to the overall profile of other conferences. Thirty different teams - just under half of the 64 teams sponsoring Division I - received at least one vote, and the large bulk of those were from the so-called Big Three leagues outside of the CCHA, ECAC or Atlantic Hockey.

Nobody truly knew what could happen, and Saturday night shouldn't change the way people view the bullet point list of BC's overall success. It shouldn't negate a record-setting season in which the Eagles won more games than any other year with the longest Hockey East winning streak in three years. Nothing should impact the team's 50th all-time NCAA Tournament win and its first national semifinal berth in 12 years, and it shouldn't erase the most goals scored by a team in 26 years. Individual goal-scoring records within a program with three former Hobey Baker Award winners shouldn't somehow lose their meaning if the Eagles don't hoist their final trophy, and freshman point numbers on par with Paul Kariya's freshman year shouldn't tarnish or diminish their spotlight.

Those players shouldn't lose their legacy, but the greater reality is that their story simply isn't finished. The outcome of Saturday night won't take anything away from the greatness surrounding the 2023-2024 Boston College hockey season, but a win in the national championship game would do something that's only occurred five other times in program history by making this team and these players something that every college hockey player dreams about.

Good teams become great by realizing their potential, but for this team, a win on Saturday is about immortality.

Here's what to watch for when the Eagles play Denver in the national championship:

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Game Storylines (Mighty Ducks Edition)

Have you guys ever seen a flock of ducks flying in perfect formation? It's beautiful. Pretty awesome the way they all stick together. Ducks never say die. Ever seen a duck fight? No way. Why? Because the other animals are afraid. They know that if they mess with one duck, they gotta deal with the whole flock. -Gordon Bombay

Denver beat Boston College in overtime during the October start of the regular season, but nobody acknowledged the game's outcome much during Friday's press conferences aside from that it happened. Rotating back to the idea that one game can't possibly determine the outcome of a season, head coach David Carle automatically threw out the idea that both teams were considerably different from their first meeting, but it felt like he understood how his team particularly changed since October.

The Pioneers' young head coach understood how his team wasn't quite ready for prime time in October, and even though Denver defeated BC, the Pioneers were a one-sided team that hadn't quite figured out how to defend with any type of consistency. Their prolific offense was primarily built from the 30-plus goals scored across four games, but the bookended loss that occurred after an eight-goal outburst against Omaha illustrated the need to commit to defense and goaltending over finding ways to score five goals per game.

"We gave the first half of the season a snapshot to the guys," Carle admitted. "We've been the one number one offense for the majority of the season, but I think at the time that we were [something] like 40th in goals against per game. We just showed them the date. The lowest goals-against per game [for a championship team] was 10 or 11, and I believe that was us in 2022. Everybody else had been in the top five."

Denver lost to North Dakota in the first half of the season because it couldn't win with five goals on the scoreboard, and a 7-3 loss to Western Michigan coupled with a later 7-2 loss to the Broncos illustrated how the team simply had to rally around its goaltending by the national tournament. Five games later, the NCHC champions have three consecutive 2-1 wins in their reserve with two coming against Hockey East teams and the Regional Final win over Cornell occurring against one of the best defensive teams in the nation.

"It was time to stop messing around with this," Carle admitted. "We needed to get better at it, and I think our guys have [improved]. I don't know what the exact numbers are, where we're at today, but it's certainly been excellent once we've hit the national tournament and our level of desperation and urgency to defend and defend properly [appeared]. There's no doubt that's been a huge part of our success."

Hey, guys! Excuse me, guys, you gotta untie me now! Ha ha! Good joke. Very funny. I like it. No joke, c'mon, guys. -Goldberg

I've never been a huge fan of using statistics or analytics to explain a team's success, but Denver's defense very obviously thrusts its plus-minus capabilities right into the conversation with defensemen who all work somewhere north of plus-30. Goalie Matt Davis posted a 2.42 goals against average for the season leading into Saturday, but the team in front of him includes players like Zeev Buium and brother Shai Buium, along with the aptly-named Boston Buckberger.

"Shai is certainly growing his 200-foot game," said Carle, "and has a commitment to the defensive side of things. His evolution is similar to Mike Benning, who came in as a really good offensive player and a great offensive mind, but wanted to play more minutes. It's about not gaining my trust but his teammates' trust to play in big situations, big moments, on the kill, up a goal in those last-minute type situations, playing against the other team's top-six. Shai has made the commitment to himself and his teammates that he wanted to be in those moments."

The Buium brothers are likely going to draw assignments against Will Smith and Cutter Gauthier, so having last change on Saturday night offers a way for BC to avoid having its top-flight scorers on the ice against two of the best defensive skaters in the country. It's not necessarily, in that case, about who skates on which shift but about how it sets up a shift after an icing call or on the penalty kill and how Brown, a master chess player behind the bench, deploys the depth lines that are largely part of the reason why BC advanced to the championship game.

"They're hard to open up," said Brown. "They really play well as a team defensively. They seem like they're moving as a group of five all over the ice. There's not a lot of free space, they're not spread out. They do a great job of getting numbers around the puck. We know we're going to have to play with a lot of pace and change sides to try and open up some free ice. They do a great job of taking that away quickly."

A team isn't a bunch of kids out to win. A team is something you belong to, something you feel, something you earn. -Gordon Bombay

Friday of Frozen Four week is usually the slowest day for media members. Everyone's recovering from Thursday's long night of hockey, and the speedy pace of the week's activities grinds to a screeching halt when teams spend their practice session getting healthier through recovery processes. Halving the number of media availabilities translates to the more robust roundtable conversation at the State of the Game press conference, and the only activity is the Hobey Baker Award ceremony that occurs around the dinner hour. It remains hockey's answer to the Heisman Trophy, but the ceremony usually occupies a slot away from the Frozen Four arena media room. It's more open for fans and attendees, so the laid-back approach is more campfire than raging inferno.

A picture surfaced, however, from the Hobey Award ceremony that punctuated the entire weekend. BC forward Cutter Gauthier had just arrived in his snazzy suit when he left his family to talk with a member of his program's hockey community. The white hair and ever-present coffee cup left no question about the person's identity, and for the first time all weekend, Jerry York found himself in the central spotlight of the college hockey social media universe.

"He's always so supportive and will shoot encouraging texts or calls or whatever," said Brown. "As far as advice, he's been an open book the whole two years. It's not new. It's not like he's jumping back in as we get to the tournament, but spending 14 years and having the opportunity to be at these Frozen Fours several times with him, I picked up a lot."

York's presence is a reminder of BC's history, and his four national championships placed the Eagles in hallowed ground in the eastern college hockey conversation originally occupied by Boston University. His legacy is ingrained in the record books as the winningest coach to ever grace a hockey arena, and his presence in Minnesota was duly noted several times over the previous week.

Seeing York with Gauthier linked the generations of BC hockey to a public display that people might have forgotten. I know my personal opinion saw possible existential crises over the past couple of years with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, but York's presence was a reminder that BC didn't go anywhere. It didn't lose its way, and it certainly didn't lose its identity.

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BC-Denver X Factor

Special Teams

BC entered Frozen Four week with the best combined special teams in the nation, but the penalty conversation rocketed into Denver's game against Boston University when the Pioneers avoided the sin bin. It drew consternation for perceived irregularities or inconsistencies, but the subtle storyline underneath the surface is a reminder that the Pioneers simply don't take many penalties and won't beat themselves.

It's not even about the number of penalties, per se, because Denver's 22nd-best 3.91 penalties per game is more than several teams that didn't play in the national championship tournament, but going to the box less than 10 minutes per game is a stark contrast from a Boston College team that averages approximately a quarter-minute more in the box per game. There's likely a one extra power play that Denver earns on a game-by-game basis within that number, and while the Eagles are still the best penalty kill in the nation at 89 percent, the Pioneers' 22 percent power play and propensity for not taking calls probably yields a one-goal difference in any game.

In other words, the difference in Denver's ability to advance to the national championship stems from what happens when someone's in the box.

"The goal scoring was more of an anomaly in the last three games," Carle said. "Remembering who we're playing, these are the best teams in the country. I think we've all seen the tightness of the games, how many overtime games there were in the regional round. I saw a tweet that every champion has had to play an overtime game since 2017 on their way to the title. It's hard to win. We're playing really good teams with really good goalies."

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Dan's Overall Hockey Observation of the Week

Winning a Frozen Four championship doesn't matter on the location or the arena, but winning a championship in Minnesota makes this title feel more mystical. I joked several times about the differences between Massachusetts and Minnesota high school hockey culture while letting my inner Bostonian claim some type of ill-gotten superiority over the State of Hockey, but I genuinely love having St. Paul in a regular part of the Frozen Four rotation.

Hockey is a game that often finds itself at odds with itself. It's niche upbringing in the cold weather climates of Colorado, Minnesota, New York, New England - and Massachusetts in particular - are in contrast to the emerging national picture, and Denver is a prime example of the game's differences. The program was built on a legacy of Canadian imports at a time when coaches and hockey administrators wanted to outlaw the international flavor, but its best two defensemen are the sons of an Israeli immigrant who raised them in California (shoutout Israeli immigrant mothers…my mother was born in Haifa).

Debate over campus site regionals versus neutral site games isn't going to end any time soon, but it's worth noting how hockey continues to edge against its side seams. College hockey markets are built by local communities that are relatively small compared to the large basketball and football conglomerates, but the sport is growing to the degree that Salt Lake City is reportedly on the verge of receiving an NHL team (we don't have time to discuss the Arizona Coyotes) currently playing its home games in a college hockey arena in Arizona.

Even ten years ago, that was a wild statement. Now it's a compliment to the college game.

I don't know where this game's going in the next decade, but I know returning to Minnesota sure seems inevitable.

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Pregame Quote and Prediction

Just win, baby. -Al Davis

I don't think there's much more to add than that. Forget everything about the matchup. All that matters is scoring more than the other team tonight.

There will be a national champion crowned before we go to bed tonight.

Boston College and Denver drop the puck on Saturday night at 6 p.m. from the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Television coverage is available on national television via ESPN2 with online streaming available through ESPN's platform of online and mobile apps. Radio broadcast is also available through the Boston College Sports Network from Learfield with local coverage available on WEEI 850 AM. Streaming audio is also available through the Varsity Network.

Players Mentioned

Cutter Gauthier

Will Smith

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