Stefanoudakis: This Loss Was Everything for BC Men’s Hockey

Five Denver men’s hockey players have been first-round picks in the NHL Draft. Ever. 

In the past five years alone, Boston College has recruited a class with three players selected in the first round of the NHL Draft not once, but twice. 

Maybe the first round isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Or maybe having more first-round picks just doesn’t matter much in the context of the NCAA Tournament. 

Either way, Denver has ended BC hockey’s season in disappointment two years in a row and won two of the last four national championships.

Matt Davis came out in his typical fashion on Sunday night, as the Eagles got knocked out of the tournament on national television. 

The senior goaltender really seems to have a special knack for making the supposed best team in the country look like a group of JV players who were brutally thrown into the varsity state-championship game.

It was pretty clear to everyone watching on Sunday night that the Eagles were … well … something else. They certainly weren’t themselves. Whatever you want to call it, they definitely weren’t good. That’s weird, considering they’ve been great all season.  

Even though BC struggled a bit against Bentley on Friday, the Eagles got past it because that’s what great teams do—they find a way to win. 

So what was different about Sunday? The opponent, for one. Denver is not Bentley. Denver is the reigning champion and has quickly become the recurring villain in BC’s story. 

With a chance at redemption after last year’s national championship loss, you’d think that the Eagles would come out with more focus than ever. But they didn’t. They came out frazzled and disorganized, slow and seemingly unmotivated.

How do you fix that? I don’t know, and it didn’t look like Greg Brown did either. 

For as great a coach and recruiter as he is and the immense successes his teams at BC have seen, it’s hard not to look at their losses this season and wonder what was going on in his players’ heads. 

Maybe you can blame the Beanpot loss on the immense pressure of the storied tournament played in TD Garden. 

And I’m a big proponent of the idea that hockey is really, truly unpredictable (though that’s never an excuse to play poorly). Especially in a one-game elimination format, it’s undeniably easy to get caught on a slippery slope and suddenly find yourself at the bottom of the mountain, unable to claw your way back up. 

Regardless of how you justify BC’s losses this season, one thing doesn’t seem that arguable: This loss is more than just disappointing and embarrassing—it’s heartbreaking. 

It’s embarrassing to go in as the No. 1 seed in the country, to look confident and composed and unbothered heading into the tournament, then get pretty much run over the second you face a championship-caliber team. 

But it’s heartbreaking to spend the whole season looking like a team that genuinely could win the title, only to play at a much lower level when it matters most. 

Where did the team that tore up Northeastern 8–2 in the first round of the Beanpot go? What about the team that shut out BU at home in probably the biggest game of the regular season? Or maybe the team that handed then-No. 6 Providence its first shutout loss of the season? 

This season was simple: The Eagles gave everyone a taste of what they could do, and then snatched it away in the blink of an eye, leaving everyone wondering where that team went. 

For some, maybe it’s as plain as this: BC hockey is just a college hockey team, and this was just the NCAA Tournament. There was a whole season full of awesome moments for students and fans to look back on. 

But is there ever really such a thing as just a national championship? Is there such a thing as just a rivalry game or just a loss? 

The reality is, this loss was everything. It was everything to the team, to its fans, to those around the country who watched all season and waited for the Eagles to show on the national stage what they’ve been doing on a smaller scale for the past five months. 

It was everything to seniors who have followed the team through highs and lows over the past four years, seeing it seemingly reaching its peak this season, only for the whole operation to come crashing down as soon as the Hockey East Tournament rolled around. 

Most of all, though, it must have been heartbreaking to those players out there. They know better than anyone what they’re capable of, and I’m willing to bet that wasn’t it.