Weekly Hockey Primer: News and Notes

11/21/2008 - BC 2, UMass 0. The Eagles responded to a lackluster weekend split two weekends ago, beating UMass at home 2-0 behind power play goals from freshmen Cam Atkinson and Paul Carey. Muse has not looked sharp early on this season, but did turn around 27 shots to record his first shutout of the season.


11/22/2008 - UMass 4, BC 3 (OT). Those are the breaks in college hockey. The Minutemen scored with 41 seconds to play in OT to record a win over the Eagles last Saturday, 4-3. BC goals from freshman Jimmy Hayes, Kyle Kucharski and Benn Ferriero.


Road Wins. Hard to come by this year, eh? Might just be the sign of a young team. BC is 1-3-1 on the road this year with the one win coming in overtime at Merrimack. At home, BC is 6-1 (of course, with the lone loss being the Notre Dame game I attended). The good news? The Eagles next game is at home against Harvard on Friday (4:00pm). The bad? After that, the Eagles hit the road for the holiday break, playing only one home game in their next seven games, including trips to Dartmouth and BU, two exhibitions against New Brunswick over New Year's weekend, and a weekend trip to Burlington the following weekend.


Sophomore Slump? John Muse's save percentage this year has dipped below .900 (.894) and his GAA has crept up above 3 (3.04). This a year removed from the freshman's stellar performance - .921 save percentage, 2.20 GAA, and a National Championship. Hmm.


Weekly USCHO.com / CBS Sports Poll. The Eagles (7-4-1) rank 5th in this week's USCHO.com / CBS Sports Poll. With the weekend split of UMass, the Eagles fall behind Northeastern (9-2-2) in this week's poll as the top Hockey East team. The Huskies are ranked No. 4 this week. Boston University (7-4-0) drops from 2 to 8 after getting swept by Vermont last weekend. Vermont #13 (8-6-0), New Hampshire #15 (5-5-3) and Massachusetts #17 (6-4-1) round out the Top 20.

Inside College Hockey has the Eagles ranked #7 this week, while the College Hockey Blog has the Eagles ranked #5.


Holiday Ticket Sale. The Athletics Department is offering $5 and $10 tickets for most single-game tickets for Men's Hockey and Men's Basketball games. The sale runs from Friday, November 28 through Sunday, November 30 on bceagles.com.


APB on Eagles in the NHL. Vancouver's starting goaltender Roberto Luongo will be out with a groin strain and evaluated on a week-to-week basis. As a result, the Canucks have called up Cory Schneider from Manitoba to serve as Curtis Sanford's backup. If Sanford rests a game, it will be Schneider's first professional start in net.

Speaking of starting goaltenders going down with injury, Scott Clemmensen is vying to become the New Jersey Devils' No. 1 goaltender while starter Martin Brodeur is out.

Finally, a Gerbe sighting. (Thanks to Christian for the links).