Thursday, November 10, 2016

BU take 3/4 from Lil bro, lose Keller for 'a while'

The BU Terriers took 3 out of a possible 4 points last weekend in a home and home with their little brother/Northeastern. BU played well offensively both nights but played more disciplined and defensively responsible on Saturday night which lead to a 3-0 shutout win after a 4-4 tie on Friday night at Matthews Arena. Jordan Greenway, who scored the go ahead goal before taking a misconduct penalty while celebrating was benched for the first period of Saturday's night game by Coach Quinn who appeared to want to send a message that any type of celebrating penalty will not be tolerated.

Overall, it was a good weekend for the Terriers who got their first points in league play and continued to show flashes of dominance which will hopefully turn into stretches of dominance and then eventually complete game dominance by March and April. The biggest story out of the weekend was on the injury front as Clayton Keller suffered a knee injury has been termed out 'long term' by coach Quinn. This is obviously bad news for BU as Keller is their second leading scorer and plays on its top line with Jordan Greenway and Patrick Harper. It is being rumored that it is a MCL injury that will keep Keller out weeks to months. This would put Keller out until the beginning of the second semester but I think this injury can actually help BU long term or I'm just trying to convince myself of that. So here comes the spin zone (brought to you by Evan Rodrigues Inc)






Without Keller for an extended period, BU will be forced to move a center up in their lineup or move Bobo Carpenter back to center and move up a wing which would most likely be Nick Roberto or Ryan Cloonan(if healthy). Roberto has 5 points in 7 games so far this year and seems like the more likely option but no matter who it is, BU will be shorthanded an elite forward and the rest of the lineup will be forced to pick up for the lost production. This should help the team long term as it will give more players time to develop with additional ice time and opportunities to prove that they can produce consistently. I am not sure if I actually believe this but I'm going to keep saying it until I do. Nick Roberto definitely has the talent to fill in a top 6 role and produce for the Terriers. Roberto, who was suspended all of last year, after being railroaded by the NCAA is  getting back into game shape and can provide some valuable senior leadership to the top 6 forward who were all freshmen and sophomore before this weekend. I'm not saying the team will be better without Keller because they will not but it will help with the development of other players who will be helpful in providing more scoring depth later in the season.

BU's first test will be two games at the University of Michigan this weekend where they face a young Michigan team(4-3-1) that similar to BC lost a lot of their upperclassmen over this past summer. BU will be looking for their second road win of the year and their first since opening night. The real questions for the weekend though is which BU first round pick will a Michigan upperclassman claim "didn't do much"(see below) after they score the game tying goal. Meanwhile if there is a review this weekend Michigan will probably play the game under protest since their old senile head coach hates replays to get calls correct. It is rare that you go to Michigan expecting to win two games but against a young inconsistent team that lost to Union, UVM and Dartmouth it should be the goal of the weekend.

“Jack Eichel, for all he is, and he is a great player, he didn’t really do much,” said junior forward Andrew Copp/an idiot. “I think we did a good job against him" - Michigan Daily

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