Tournament-Bound Eagles Draw Bentley In Round One

I suppose it's worth addressing the giant elephant in the room.

Thursday afternoon kicks off the 2025 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Championship. Friday afternoon begins the regional in Manchester, New Hampshire with the first game involving the No. 1-ranked Boston College Eagles. The top team in the 16-team bracket plays closest to home against the team earning the last overall seed. In any given year, this isn't the "last team" into the tournament as an at-large bid. Instead, it's the lowest-seeded conference champion.

In college hockey, that's usually Atlantic Hockey's champion, which this year delivered a 6-3 victory for third-seeded Bentley. On Sunday afternoon, the formal NCAA selection show unveiled a bracket solidifying expectations of a matchup between statistical No. 1 BC and what amounts to No. 16 Bentley.

In other words, it's a national tournament game between my two primary college hockey teams. The podcast host and writer for BC against the play-by-play announcer for Bentley.

Consider me the luckiest man in college hockey.

All joking aside, a BC-Bentley game in the first round of the NCAA Tournament is the perfect kickoff for two teams seeking unprecedented success. Their trends intertwine nicely for a localized first round regional, but the potential for a gritty and hard-nosed hockey game between two teams built from their back line strength offers an initial storyline for the week's worth of preparation.

"We have a deep defensive core that really helps our team," head coach Greg Brown told ESPN's Selection Sunday panel. "Hopefully we're good at everything, but I think helping to fuel our transition game is probably what they do best. They've been sound defensively, and of course, we have Jacob [Fowler] behind them, which is also a huge factor for us, but the core, especially with Eamon [Powell] coming back, is deep and hopefully a big strength for us going forward."

BC entered the 2024-2025 season with understood firepower at the front of its roster. The top-end talent bound for the National Hockey League staggered the comparisons to other college hockey programs, and the offensive ceiling is unquestionably higher than most teams still playing. Ryan Leonard is the national leader in goals and goals per game while Gabe Perreault's 32 assists are tied for second nationally with Denver's Zeev Buium and Aidan Thompson. Perreault's five power play goals rank him among several of the nation's best scorers, and Teddy Stiga is tied with UConn's Garrett Dahm for the national lead in shorthanded goals among players skating through the postseason - one less than St. Thomas forward Liam Malmquist for the national lead.

That flashy nature - everyone loves a highlight-reel goal - placed BC atop the local regional's billboard, but the first look at Bentley's head-to-head requires deeper involvement between the back lines. The Falcons are known for their ability to lock down opponents and create turnovers in front of goaltender Connor Hasley, so added attention on BC's rear end combinations and goaltender Jacob Fowler is a little more studious than previous, more gritty opponents.

The Northeastern loss, for example, followed a similar script to the Beanpot loss to Boston University after BC's gusty attack failed to produce multiple goals despite pounding the opposing net for a decided shot advantage. The second period then flipped a script and produced a deficit, and the Eagles, long in the tooth for their third period dramatics, finally ran out of their magical dust that produced early season comebacks and victories.

"We, unfortunately, had a little longer break than we wanted," said Brown, "but we think we put a good schedule together with some real intense practices [while] getting proper reset. Hopefully it will be sharp, come Friday."

The NCAA Tournament is a bit easier to project for hockey because of the statistical algorithms associated with determining qualifying teams, and BC understood how its first round opponent would emerge from the Atlantic Hockey tournament after Quinnipiac's ECAC semifinal loss eliminated Michigan from its No. 14 spot in the Pairwise Rankings. Jumping Cornell into the field erased the possibility of forcing either Bentley or Holy Cross to Michigan State's regional in avoidance of a first round matchup between conference opponents, but it allowed a stacked bracket to emerge from an eastern-centric region in the Granite State.

Boston College, for example, is the No. 1 team in the nation and clinched the Hockey East regular season championship during one of the best all-time years by a conference. Bentley, its first round opponent, is one of the oldest teams in college hockey and playing in its first national tournament after navigating five straight wins in the Atlantic Hockey postseason. Second-seeded Providence is a perennial thorn in everyone's side, and third-seeded Denver finished thousandths of a percentage point away from earning the Friars' home jerseys and last change afforded to the better seed.

All of these teams link back to the Eagles. The Falcons are one of two existing college hockey programs to have never lost to BC, and the Friars are another of the six-team bid representing Hockey East. Denver, the defending national champion, defeated BC in last year's championship before advancing to New Hampshire - the first time in the 16-team era that two teams from the previous year's tournament moved to the same regional in the next year's bracket.

"The guys who returned know what that [national championship] game felt like," said Brown, "and there was so much work to be done before you [could] get back to the national tournament. We focused much more short term than looking at the national. It's a goal, we knew, for us to get to the tournament, but we had to do so many things right, early in the year, to put ourselves in this position."

BC and Bentley drop the puck on Friday at 2 p.m. from SNHU Arena in Manchester, New Hampshire. The game can be seen on national television via ESPNU with streaming available through the network's family of Internet and mobile device apps. Tickets are available by visiting the Ticketmaster website.

Tournament-Bound Eagles Draw Bentley In Round One

Players Mentioned

Jacob Fowler

Ryan Leonard

Gabe Perreault

Teddy Stiga

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