Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Meg Kelly
September 28, 2026 | Men's Hockey, #ForBoston Files
This year is more about finding the next gear and next step in a program littered with success.
There is a natural temptation to look at Boston College's upcoming 2026-2027 season as a program reset for one of college hockey's national powerhouses.
The stalwart names from the national tournament runs and near-national championships had already started filtering off of the Eagles when last year started, and with them went the hardware from winning consecutive Hockey East regular season championships and finishing the season ranked within the national top-5. The remainder left at the end of last year, a season in which BC surrendered its spot atop the Hockey East standings for the first time in three years. The early offseason started when the program missed the NCAA Tournament as one of the first teams on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble, so the list of newcomers - all 12 of them - made it easier to look at this year as a hard reboot.
Head coach Greg Brown had other ideas. He understood how the winning culture from those two seasons atop the national rankings and polls influenced decisions for hockey players to attend Boston College, and the continuous build was nonlinear. Recruiting restocked and reloaded talented lines with new personnel, but the messaging wouldn't change for a team that needed to figure out - as any new season - how to play with one another at a pace commensurate with the changing tides of a new college hockey season.
"Even over our first couple of weeks, you can see the quick development of all of our new guys," said head coach Greg Brown. "It's always going to be an adjustment, going from junior hockey to the speed of college hockey. We're fortunate to have a few players that can really pick up the pace, so week-over-week, you can really see how they got more comfortable to the speed and to the processing that has to go on at that speed. It's been encouraging so far."
A year ago, BC entered the season without clear-cut replacements for stars who had left for the NHL. Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault were no longer on the top line after taking their rookie laps with professional franchises, and Jacob Fowler's signing robbed the Eagles of their concrete backstop. James Hagens, Teddy Stiga, Andre Gasseau, Brady Berard, Lukas Gustafsson, Aram Minnetian, Oskar Jellvik and others remained, but their roles all shifted into new and largely undefined responsibilities at the start of the season.
A 20-win team emerged, but the Eagles missed the NCAA Tournament when they lost to Connecticut in the Hockey East postseason semifinal. The fourth place team in the league was one of the first teams on the wrong side of the NPI mathematical algorithm after finishing in the No. 18 spot, and two main schools of thought emerged after the Beanpot champion watched Merrimack raise its first-ever championship banner to the opposite side of the TD Garden rafters.
On one hand, the season ended without postseason national play and no shot at a national championship - annual standards and expectations within both the program and its supporters. On the other hand, a supposed rebuilding season ended with 20 wins and an outside shot at the NCAA Tournament during a year in which Hockey East failed to claim more than three spots on the national radar.
"You have to learn [from changes]," said Brown. "If you look at some of our games down the stretch, those should have been wins, and we didn't score enough. Analytics would say that you played well, but you have to get wins, and we weren't able to get as many as we needed. At the same time, we remembered that we didn't need a complete overhaul. There was a lot of good hockey there, so I guess you just pay even more attention to the detail of it."
This year's team therefore represents a continuation of Brown's involvement with last year's roster. Twelve new Eagles arrived in Chestnut Hill, but expectations are instead geared towards finding a new roster identity that's built around players continuing to blossom into new roles. Players like Dean Letourneau and Ryan Conmy, Teddy Stiga and Will Vote all have new opportunities to find their way through the line chart, and Jake Sondreal joined Stiga as alternate captains to Vote's main letter. Will Moore, a highly-touted freshman recruit who scored the game-winning goal against Minnesota, has a full year of experience in a college hockey locker room.
Additionally, freshmen Teddy Mutryn and Casey Mutryn bring a certain thump that was lacking from last year's roster, and Alex Pelletier is a smaller and more fleeted skater for the lineup. Mathias Vanhanen was a second round pick for the New Jersey Devils, and Olivers Murnieks was picked in the fourth round by Buffalo, and Oscar Hemming was a first round pick who jumped onto the roster at the halfway point of last season.Â
"You have to be able to have a good start in the non-conference games, and you just have to execute down the stretch," said Brown. "We played pretty well in a lot of those games. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And we have to make sure that we're ready to go every night. Really, that's what you take from it. There are not enough games to go through bad spells. It's a short, 34-game regular season. You have to be dialed in for the whole time."
BC unofficially begins the season this week with two exhibition games against Michigan State and the United States National Development Program before beginning the regular season on October 9 with a home game against Alaska. For tickets, visit BCEagles.com or call 617-552-GoBC.
The stalwart names from the national tournament runs and near-national championships had already started filtering off of the Eagles when last year started, and with them went the hardware from winning consecutive Hockey East regular season championships and finishing the season ranked within the national top-5. The remainder left at the end of last year, a season in which BC surrendered its spot atop the Hockey East standings for the first time in three years. The early offseason started when the program missed the NCAA Tournament as one of the first teams on the wrong side of the NCAA bubble, so the list of newcomers - all 12 of them - made it easier to look at this year as a hard reboot.
Head coach Greg Brown had other ideas. He understood how the winning culture from those two seasons atop the national rankings and polls influenced decisions for hockey players to attend Boston College, and the continuous build was nonlinear. Recruiting restocked and reloaded talented lines with new personnel, but the messaging wouldn't change for a team that needed to figure out - as any new season - how to play with one another at a pace commensurate with the changing tides of a new college hockey season.
"Even over our first couple of weeks, you can see the quick development of all of our new guys," said head coach Greg Brown. "It's always going to be an adjustment, going from junior hockey to the speed of college hockey. We're fortunate to have a few players that can really pick up the pace, so week-over-week, you can really see how they got more comfortable to the speed and to the processing that has to go on at that speed. It's been encouraging so far."
A year ago, BC entered the season without clear-cut replacements for stars who had left for the NHL. Ryan Leonard and Gabe Perreault were no longer on the top line after taking their rookie laps with professional franchises, and Jacob Fowler's signing robbed the Eagles of their concrete backstop. James Hagens, Teddy Stiga, Andre Gasseau, Brady Berard, Lukas Gustafsson, Aram Minnetian, Oskar Jellvik and others remained, but their roles all shifted into new and largely undefined responsibilities at the start of the season.
A 20-win team emerged, but the Eagles missed the NCAA Tournament when they lost to Connecticut in the Hockey East postseason semifinal. The fourth place team in the league was one of the first teams on the wrong side of the NPI mathematical algorithm after finishing in the No. 18 spot, and two main schools of thought emerged after the Beanpot champion watched Merrimack raise its first-ever championship banner to the opposite side of the TD Garden rafters.
On one hand, the season ended without postseason national play and no shot at a national championship - annual standards and expectations within both the program and its supporters. On the other hand, a supposed rebuilding season ended with 20 wins and an outside shot at the NCAA Tournament during a year in which Hockey East failed to claim more than three spots on the national radar.
"You have to learn [from changes]," said Brown. "If you look at some of our games down the stretch, those should have been wins, and we didn't score enough. Analytics would say that you played well, but you have to get wins, and we weren't able to get as many as we needed. At the same time, we remembered that we didn't need a complete overhaul. There was a lot of good hockey there, so I guess you just pay even more attention to the detail of it."
This year's team therefore represents a continuation of Brown's involvement with last year's roster. Twelve new Eagles arrived in Chestnut Hill, but expectations are instead geared towards finding a new roster identity that's built around players continuing to blossom into new roles. Players like Dean Letourneau and Ryan Conmy, Teddy Stiga and Will Vote all have new opportunities to find their way through the line chart, and Jake Sondreal joined Stiga as alternate captains to Vote's main letter. Will Moore, a highly-touted freshman recruit who scored the game-winning goal against Minnesota, has a full year of experience in a college hockey locker room.
Additionally, freshmen Teddy Mutryn and Casey Mutryn bring a certain thump that was lacking from last year's roster, and Alex Pelletier is a smaller and more fleeted skater for the lineup. Mathias Vanhanen was a second round pick for the New Jersey Devils, and Olivers Murnieks was picked in the fourth round by Buffalo, and Oscar Hemming was a first round pick who jumped onto the roster at the halfway point of last season.Â
"You have to be able to have a good start in the non-conference games, and you just have to execute down the stretch," said Brown. "We played pretty well in a lot of those games. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And we have to make sure that we're ready to go every night. Really, that's what you take from it. There are not enough games to go through bad spells. It's a short, 34-game regular season. You have to be dialed in for the whole time."
BC unofficially begins the season this week with two exhibition games against Michigan State and the United States National Development Program before beginning the regular season on October 9 with a home game against Alaska. For tickets, visit BCEagles.com or call 617-552-GoBC.
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