Following their 5-2 home victory over UNH, the Terriers will complete their busy three-game week by making the short trek south to take on Providence College.
Both teams have entered the new year red-hot: BU (7-8-3, 6-5-2 in Hockey East) respectively drew and won in clashes with Harvard and UNH, while Providence (12-5-4, 6-3-1 in Hockey East) beat Brown, Dartmouth, and Miami of Ohio, while also tying the Redhawks in the second game of the teams’ weekend series. While BU has played half as many games as the Friars have in 2019, there is clear momentum behind both teams ahead of this Hockey East bout.
BU struggled in their first meeting with the Friars this season, falling 5-0 at Agganis Arena to their visitors. The loss came during a major scoring drought for the Terriers, but since that defeat against Providence, BU has only been blanked once in 13 contests. A lot has changed since the two Hockey East sides met on October 26, and BU head coach Albie Connell is confident that his Terriers can get revenge on the Friars the second time around.
“There were some really good stretches in that game that we played”, said the first year skipper about the loss to Providence back in the Fall.
Leading the lines for the Friars have been junior Kasper Björkqvist and senior Scott Conway, both of which hold a team-best nine goals on the season. Close behind, sophomore Greg Printz and freshman Jack Dugan have both tallied seven goals for the Friars. Dugan is second on the team in points with 23, while junior Josh Wilkins leads the team in that category with 24.
As for the visiting Terriers, senior captain Bobo Carpenter added to his team-leading goal total (10) in the win over UNH. Junior co-captain Dante Fabbro and freshman Joel Farabee also provided goals in the contest, bolstering their impressive point totals to 16 and 15 respectively. The Terriers may also be regaining an experienced blueliner, with junior Chad Krys set to make his return from injury.
“I hope he’s in tomorrow”, said O’Connell on Friday night. “He was like 50/50 for tonight.”
One of the most highly-anticipated individual matchups in this contest will be a pair of players settled nearly two hundred feet apart, with two of the conference’s premier goaltenders going head-to-head for the second time this season. Starting in net for Providence is expected to be senior Hayden Hawkey, who holds a .911 save percentage, while his likely counterpart junior Jake Oettinger possesses a percentage of .924 for BU.
Both teams are undefeated in 2019 for now, but one team’s streak will likely come to an end on Saturday night. This Hockey East tilt will begin at 7pm at Providence’s Schneider Arena, and can be heard through GoTerriers.com, or watched on Friars.com.
Are you confident that BU can get the road victory against a very talented Providence team? Let us know your thoughts ahead of the game in the comments below!
Yes we can. A few things to watch for providence lost to bc last night so they are going to come out hard. I’m not sure if there students are back yet but that barn is always loud providence plays very physical there and for some reason over the years our answer for that physicality leaves us short handed and thus chasing the score. I’m sure the guys want to revenge the home opener but we have to play within ourselves we need to make plays that are there we get in trouble sometimes trying to make the cute pass when a simple shot with a guy breaking to the net is the play to be needed. We had shots on Hawkey the first time around and outplayed them for long stretches of that game and still got blown out, the reason for this is we did not shoot from high percentage areas and we did not get to a single rebound that I can remember that needs to be different tonight. Coming off the break this will be our third game this week as the game wears on we will have some tired legs we will need our third and fourth lines to keep playing hard and taking it to providence like they have the first two games back. It’s games like this we are thankful for coach Czechk for getting these guys in great shape. On the defensive side of things our breakout needs to be much better then it was back in October. All our forwards were stationary we need to be moving our feet. We also backed into Jake way too much. We need to step up force providence to shoot from areas they don’t want to and take the body let Jake see the puck. Looking forward to tonight big task but we can do it go bu🐾
Yes we can and did! Here’s to more four-point weekends!