BC Hockey Preview of Champions: Teddy Doherty, #4

The defending national champion Boston College hockey team will welcome six new faces to its bench this year. Some came straight from high school, while others emerged from the same junior hockey leagues that once played host to our veterans. Amongst them is Teddy Doherty, a local freshman defenseman from Hopkinton.

Doherty did not play his high school hockey in Hopkinton, in Massachusetts, or even in the Northeast: he went to Shattuck-St. Mary’s School in Faribault, Minnesota, a small town about an hour away from Minneapolis. It was a strategic move by his family to send Doherty to a school that would truly help set him on the path to a great hockey career. He spent just three years in Minnesota, notching 25 points in his junior year before shuffling down to Dubuque, Iowa and Johnny Gaudreau’s old team: the Dubuque Fighting Saints.

The two were never teammates, as Gaudreau was busy winning a national championship here while Doherty tallied a 16-point season out in the Hawkeye State. Additionally, like a few other of Doherty’s current teammates, he was a member of the U.S. Under-17 Select Team, taking part in international competitions (and winning one in 2010).

Doherty is a Massachusetts native, but also a young man whose family has some Boston College hockey history. His uncle is Marty Hughes, a former Eagle who helped raise the trophy in 2001.

You don’t typically get big-time offensive production from defensemen, and Doherty is no different. As far as his play on the blue line goes, few of us out there have seen it, but with a couple upperclassmen having left the school, there is room for Doherty to move onto the ice at some point. His playing time to start might not be all that extraordinary, but as we saw with other solid freshmen in the recent past, Jerry York does reward good performances with ice time. Doherty will have to earn his way out there, but the possibility exists that he can.

Finally, follow Teddy on Twitter.