Boston College 3, UMass-Lowell 0: Streaking Eagles Blank River Hawks

#1 Boston College Eagles hockey continues dominating the rest of its conference and college hockey, this time defeating a top-tier opponent.

On Friday night at Kelley Rink, the Eagles beat the #7 Massachusetts-Lowell River Hawks, 3-0. With the win, Boston College improves to 25-4-3 (16-1-1) on the season, widening their insurmountable lead in Hockey East and stretching their unbeaten streak to 18 games in a row.

Junior forward Johnny Gaudreau continues his extra-human play, running his own personal points streak to 27 games in a row. He netted the game-winner for Boston College on the power play in the first period, which happened to be his 28th goal of the season. The Hobey Baker frontrunner now has 62 points in 32 games this year.

The star of the show tonight, however, was freshman goalie Thatcher Demko. As stout in goal as ever, he stopped all 33 River Hawks shots to earn his second career shutout win. Connor Hellebuyck of UMass-Lowell was not bad himself, holding the Eagles to under their season average in goals, but gave up three goals and saved 31 in defeat against the nation’s top offense.

Team captain Patrick Brown notched two points on the evening, both on assists. Brown has eight points over his last five games.

After a few days of hockey being a humbling experience for American viewers, Boston College put together a very good victory against a legitimate opponent. Even so, UMass-Lowell might be a top-ten opponent with designs on contending for another Hockey East title at the Garden next month, but the Eagles have been on another level of hockey existence for several months now, gearing up for the fun things that are to come during the rest of “trophy season.”

These two teams will face off again on Saturday night in Lowell for their final regular-season meeting.