2012 National Championship: Boston College vs. Ferris State

Tonight, #1 Boston College men’s hockey has a date with destiny.

Specifically, the encounter involves Ferris State at the 2012 National Championship Game. The winning team is the last one standing in the 2011-12 college hockey season, while the defeated gets to be the first-place loser.

To reach the title game, Boston College vanquished Air Force (2-0), Minnesota-Duluth (4-0), and Minnesota (6-1) and have won a Jerry York-best eighteen games in a row, still not having lost since their disastrous January weekend in Maine. As for Ferris State, previewed here, they defeated Denver (2-1), Cornell (2-1), and Union (3-1) to clear their path.

A more detailed comparison of Boston College and Ferris State:

Ferris State is very much a defensive team, and as their results from this tournament suggest so far, they’re more likely to win a low-scoring game with strong goaltending and blue-line play. The Bulldogs are a very good team, but the problem for them is that they are facing a team that has still managed to be better than them in every major metric available to us this season. Everything Ferris State has done, Boston College has done better. The Eagles have also managed not only to beat some excellent teams in the process, but blow them out of the water.

Still, what matters is not who has been the best of these two teams all season; if that were the question, with all due respect to Ferris State, the answer would have to be BC. The only important thing is being the better team on Saturday night.