Boston College 7, RPI 2: Eagles Smash Engineers in Home Opener

Andrew B. Fielding-USA TODAY Sports

The #4 Boston College Eagles have already left the disappointments in Michigan behind them, defeating the #15 RPI Engineers, 7-2, at Conte Forum in their 2013-14 home opener.

With the win, the Eagles improve to 1-1 on the new season.

Goal Sequence
[BC] 2:03 1st: Kevin Hayes (PP; Gaudreau, Savage) – BC 1, RPI 0
[RPI] 17:05 1st: Milos Bubela (Tinordi, Zalewski) – BC 1, RPI 1

[BC] 6:24 2nd: Johnny Gaudreau (PP; Hayes, Arnold) – BC 2, RPI 1
[BC] 6:37 2nd: Quinn Smith (GW; Calnan) – BC 3, RPI 1
[RPI] 11:02 2nd: Jimmy DeVito (Leonard) – BC 3, RPI 2
[BC] 15:29 2nd: Ryan Fitzgerald (Cangelosi, Hayes) – BC 4, RPI 2

[BC] 0:18 3rd: Bill Arnold (Gaudreau) – BC 5, RPI 2
[BC] 3:04 3rd: Chris Calnan (Smith) – BC 6, RPI 2
[BC] 12:03 3rd: Steve Santini (Savage, Arnold) – BC 7, RPI 2

Analysis
Despite not being a perfectly air-tight effort, the vast majority of what the Eagles did was good. For one thing, they scored seven goals, six of them in the final two periods after having played a shaky first. None of them appeared to be cheap from section JJ and several were of the highlight-reel type. Several newcomers found their way onto the score sheet as well.

Speaking of newcomers, freshman goalie Thatcher Demko played well in his first start. He faced several good scoring chances by the Engineers and stood his ground on most of them. Demko played with poise despite RPI crashing the net on numerous occasions. He did everything the Eagles needed him to do and he will get another start very soon.

It is difficult to quibble with a 7-2 win, but two things stand out as needing improvement for Boston College: the penalties and turnovers. This is a younger team now and there are going to be mishaps along the way, but the penalty situation is out of hand and has been since prior to this season. On Sunday, Boston College took seven of them, but the good news is that the Eagles went 7-for-7 on the penalty kill and looked sharp for most of them.

Boston College created several turnovers against themselves, one of which directly attributed to a breakaway goal for RPI. The newer guys on the team will have to learn as they go to protect the puck avoid the careless giveaways.

The first period was not that well played by the Eagles, and they were outshot by a 13-2 margin (though it says something about them that they were tied in spite of that), but the final two were the sort of dominating periods fans have come to expect from this hockey team.

The Eagles return to the ice on Friday night against the Wisconsin Badgers in a rematch of the 2010 national championship game.