Beyond The Green Line, BC-BU Is Just Plain Good Hockey

A weekend hockey series between Boston College and Boston University is impossible to separate from its obvious hype. No singular game between the Eagles and Terriers is simply a regular season game worth the same three points as each of BC's wins over Providence College or BU's victory over New Hampshire. Seeing those opposite colors emerge from an opponent's tunnel is the equivalent of throwing red meat to starving hounds who haven't eaten since last year's matchups, and BC and BU players once regarded as friends and teammates within USA Hockey's national development program shelve their respective respect or admiration in favor of hate's steaming-hot cauldron.

Yet underneath the surface, this weekend's home-and-home represents big game hockey between two ultra-talented programs. A newly-minted No. 1 team in the nation faces one of the surging programs within its conference at a key crux and turning point in the Hockey East regular season. That same team, in a tribute to the challenge of playing in college hockey's most powerful conference, is the second place team chasing the first place opponent in the opposite locker room. Two similar styles of hockey with their own unique successes and strengths face a mirror image team capable of breaking holes in those weaknesses.

Yes, it's Boston College and Boston University, but anyone looking for the best hockey matchup in the country won't have to look much further than the three miles separating the two teams.

"I think nationally, there was more [hype] because of the one-versus-two thing [from last year]," said head coach Greg Brown about facing the Terriers, "but for us, the intensity is there anyways. You always want to be competitive against BU [because] we're both near the top or at the top of the league. So you're playing for that, and nationally, both teams are in the picture, so you want to keep momentum to make the tournament. If you can make the tournament, you want to get as high a seed as possible."

The weekend won't quite capture the same hype as last year's unprecedented meeting between No. 1 Boston University and No. 2 Boston College, but sweeping Providence offered enough mathematical comeback for the Eagles to still bring a No. 1 ranking into a home-and-home with the No. 8 Terriers after Michigan State abdicated an overtime loss to its own in-state rival from Michigan. Winners in four straight games after dropping January's opening round at Merrimack, the Eagles possess the top two scorers in the league and two of the most prolific scorers on average points per game in Hockey East in front of a defense rated among the nation's best goal stoppers.

They do not, however, boast first place in the league because BU found its own groove by beating Hockey East teams in the aftermath of a rough start to the season. Like BC, the Terriers started the second half of the season with four wins after dropping a gut-wrenching decision to a lower-seeded Yale team, but even that loss to the Bulldogs followed a number of well-placed wins over conference teams that followed the tie and shootout win over Maine. Having been 4-5-1 nationally at that point, the Friendship Four victories in Belfast, Northern Ireland triggered a run that included six points against Merrimack, six points against Vermont and five points against UNH.

"It's always so exciting with the BU weekend because [records] don't matter," said Aidan Hreschuk. "Even during my freshman year, we were unranked and they were ranked, but it felt like the whole school was behind [us]. It feels like a playoff atmosphere where you're going to class with everyone excited about the weekend. Obviously, we're always excited to play, no matter who we're playing, but if you have that community behind you, there's something special about a game where the rankings don't matter."

Statistically, Boston College enters Friday with a distinct advantage over a BU team with both the 11th-worst overall scoring defense and the 11th-worst penalty kill in the nation. BC is one of seven teams with a goals against average under two goals per game, and not even a slight regression on the penalty kill drove the Eagles below the 90 percent barrier in man-down situations. Goalie Jacob Fowler's seventh-best goals against average is more than 50 percent lower than the 3.11 GAA for second-year Brown transfer Mathieu Caron, and both Drew Fortescue and James Hagens own plus-minus ratings in the top-10 nationally.

BU, though, absorbed those numbers during a season-long quest to rediscover its defensive stroke after North Dakota, Michigan, UMass-Lowell and Maine all tilted the Terrier goals against average into a wholly negative direction. The 7-5 loss to Yale aside, BU enters this weekend averaging well over five goals per game offensively over the four-game winning streak with a defense that's surrendered less than 2.50 goals per game - virtually three-quarters of a goal less than the team's season-long average.

"They're incredibly fast," said Hreschuk. "They transition the puck very well. I think they're one of the few teams that play a similar style to us. A lot of teams, their whole strategy is to slow us down and trap us in the neutral zone. When you play BU, they're trying to play their game, which is almost a back-and-forth, high-offense, high-speed [game], and you don't get to space out a lot. You have to think that you can see a lot of open ice, a lot of three-on-twos with high-high speed and high tempo, and there's a lot of movement in the o-zone where the defense is going to be really involved. There's a lot of offense, and that's exciting because I think it's a challenge for us to try and slow them down a little."

Ultimately, a matchup between BC and BU never breaks down to its smallest and most component parts, and the last 10 meetings are littered with head-to-head wins and losses on both sides. The 6-2 win at TD Garden from last March hung a maroon and gold conference tournament banner on Causeway Street for the first time since 2012, but BU's previous win in the Beanpot pushed the Eagles into the consolation game for the fourth straight city championship. That it came after the home-and-home sweep by BC was a silver medal for a Terrier squad that lost six points and the No. 1 national spot less than a week earlier, but it inverted the Beanpot win by BC that fell to the aftermath of BU's late-January sweep at Agganis Arena and Conte Forum.

For the past 295 meetings, neither BC nor BU gained an upper hand on one another, and even the all-time series record is slivered to the six-game advantage held by the Terriers. But two teams ranked atop the league standings forever makes this game - regardless of its iconic status - one worth watching before it becomes a precursor to more likely meetings at TD Garden and beyond.

"I have a bunch of friends who are at programs all over the country," said the California-bred Hreschuk. "When we were really young, it was always like, 'who?' And I think as we got older, we realized that college is such a cool opportunity, and Hockey East, in general, is such a good option for development. For me personally, I have family out here [in Massachusetts], so this was a no-brainer. For anyone now, having the opportunity to come and be a part of Hockey East, with how good of a division it is, every team's really good. There are no off-nights. There are no bad teams. For a lot of California kids, this is worth the trip out east."

No. 1 BC and No. 8 Boston University drop the puck at 7 p.m. on Friday night from Agganis Arena before switching gears to Conte Forum for a 7 p.m. puck drop on Saturday. Both games can be seen locally on NESN with added streaming coverage available from ESPN-Plus for subscribers to the network's service.

Boston College Athletics

Beyond The Green Line, BC-BU Is Just Plain Good Hockey

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