Boston College: Your back-to-back Hockey East champions

It wasn’t always pretty, but the #2 Boston College Eagles have successfully defended their 2010 Hockey East Tournament championship by winning again in 2011. A 5-3 victory at the TD Garden on Saturday night gave the Eagles their tenth Hockey East title and another Lamoriello Trophy for the case.

The Eagles scored first on a Pat Mullane goal about half-way through the first period. The lead was very short-lived, however, as Merrimack came right back and hit John Muse for a goal to even the score at 1-1. That tie was also short-lived, as about a minute and a half later, Brian Gibbons made it a 2-1 Eagles lead. Just when it looked as though the Eagles would skate into the intermission with the aforementioned lead, however, Merrimack cashed in on a power play goal with under 30 seconds to go to even the game at 2-2.

There would not be any more scoring until the third period, where the Eagles went ahead 3-2 at around the half-way mark of the period on Cam Atkinson’s first of two goals. Boston College never trailed in this game, but they did tie Merrimack several times, the last of which was at the 13:32 mark of the final period when the Warriors struck very quickly on the power play. Atkinson put the Eagles back ahead for good late in the third, scoring a goal on the rebound to make it 4-3. It was his 30th goal of the season. Brian Dumoulin put the icing on the cake with a very late goal to seal the final score of 5-3.

There were extended periods where Merrimack came out with more fire, and they certainly did not play a bad game by any stretch, but the Eagles’ experience and timely scoring (as well as some reliably good goaltending by Muse) carried them to the trophy. They will certainly get a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament as they will find out this weekend what their draw will be.

Congratulations especially go out to the Eagles’ senior class, which, in four years, has won three Hockey East titles. That is no easy task.

Now, it really gets fun.