What are the biggest games lost this season in terms of BU dropping out of position for an Auto-bid

Well, the Auto-Bid goes to the conference tournament champion so March 14th vs UConn in the Hockey East tournament Quarterfinal.

However, for an at-large bid it’s hard to quantify what “big loss” is. There’s a couple of ways you can go about this e.g. flipping loss to teams higher up in the NPI that would boost you or flipping losses to teams lower in the NPI that hurt you. We will take a look at the latter. CollegeHockeyNews breaks down a team’s NPI showing the games with the lowest game NPI—the second to last column.

If we flip just these four games to wins, BU ends up 13th in the NPI not safe but in a better position going into the final weekend of the season.

What do you expect the roster to look like next year? There's lots of projected incoming freshmen who are expected to be high NHL picks, but there's not enough room for all of them barring lots of early departures through signings and the portal. That also doesn't even get into the fact that they almost certainly don't want to be as young next year as this year. How do you see it all shaking out?

Disclaimer: we’re not really prospect/roster construction experts at BU Hockey Stats nor do we following recruiting closely so information on the incoming class may not be current.

We’re going to assume with the 26 player roster limit a roster of 14 forwards, 9 defensemen, and 3 goalies.

On defense, I would like to see Kyle Kim and Malte Vass find better opportunities, elsewhere. Kim only getting into one game this season and Vass being the extra defenseman in most games that he got in. In addition to those portal entries, not bringing Amico back would leave two open D spots. Those spots could be filled with older, more experienced transfers so the team can start on the right foot defensively from the onset of the season.

The forwards group is tougher. If everyone sans Eiserman and Boisvert returns, BU is over by 5 forward spots—based on projections (S/O BurntBoats)), so we’ll go through and say who we think should/might stay and who we feel could go.

The only rising senior forward is Jack Harvey is 100% a keep and should be a big part of the forward group.

Rising juniors are Kamil Bednarik, Nick Roukounakis, and Brandon Svoboda. Roukounakis is a keep, Bednarik probably signs, Svoboda stays/transfers.

The rising sophomores are Tynan Lawrence, Jack Murtagh, Ryder Ritchie, Jonathan Morello, Ben Merrill, Conrad Fondrk, John McNelis, and Jay Feldberg. Of this group Lawrence, Ritchie, Morello, and Merrill have seen the most consistency and are most likely to figure the most in the new season. Which leaves 4 possible transfers.

Assuming no changes to commitments, this wouldn’t leave any room for transfers. If there was a spot available BU is in need of another “power forward” that can position themselves in front of the goalie and screen and/or score in tight.

Would it be possible to get a cumulative player score average for the season (take all their individual scores each game and average it out)

What overall final letter grade do you give BU hockey for this season? Better yet, why that grade?

I’d give BU a C. In the first half, the team struggled defensively with a young group of defensemen but as the season went on defense got more solid. The team dealt with injuries throughout the season which hampered chemistry and production. They had times when they showed promise and times when they didn’t. They were solidly middle of a conference that was chaotic and inconsistent which hurt everyone in the national picture. In the end, in the league, they weren’t far off from the teams above them. Did they not reach their full potential? sure. Was the season as terrible and horrible as some people make it out to be? no. Sometimes in sports, things just don’t fall your way.

Record wise, the Terriers finished the first half just about where they did last year, with one extra game. Historical, in the last decade, BU is a second half team, improving as the calendar turns to January.

Earlier in the season, we shared the above chart showing BU’s defense above average. Basically, it’s xGA (expected Goals Allowed) above the National Average times a weight + GA above the National Average times a weight, both at EV. Noticeable is the defense has tightened up since then, with no Terriers below -2.1 since Quinnipiac.

Mikhail Yegorov, who had a rough October, has begun to return to his former self. His Goals Saved Above Expected has drastically improved—aside from Dec. 6 vs. Vermont—as he has recorded a GSAx less than a goal in every game since November 1st.

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And now, onto your questions:

What was the lowest ranked team based on RPI/NPI to make the tournament? And how does that compare to this current BU team - Sean

Due to certain sites that used to allow you to look back at old Pairwise Rankings, breaking the feature. We cannot determine an actual answer, however, in 2015-16 Northeastern ended the first half with a 3-11-2—putting them around 40 in the Pairwise at the time. The Huskies rallied in the 2nd half finishing 22-14-5 winning the Hockey East Tournament and ending up 13th in the final Pairwise.

It’s also a bit useless to try to compare to past seasons because the ranks themselves and their “distance” to a tournament spot are not proportional. For example, the RPI gap from 13 (the last AL spot) to 23 at the end of last season was 0.0306. Additionally, the NPI is different math so we really don’t know exactly how things will project out.

Long story short, as a wise man once said: “Win your games and don’t worry about this!!”

Do you think it was a mistake for the coaching staff to not pursue an upperclassman with some grit in the portal? And do you think Jay and staff will change their recruiting philosophy moving forward? - Bomber

Players are actual people, not items at a store. Just because fans think someone will be fine being on the 4th line as an upperclassman transfer on their team doesn’t mean the player will, when they can be a top 6 forward somewhere else. At the end of the day, hockey players want to play as much hockey as they can.

Recruiting is not an exact science, sometimes a guy will overachieve, and sometimes a guy will underachieve. It’s no longer the 90s, you’re not getting a team of four years of Chris Drury in this day and age. You try to get the most you can get out of the guys you can get. At the end of the day, it’s best to trust the process and the people that know best, because it’s literally their job.

Are any Terriers within reach of 100 career points this season? -defkit

Owen McLaughlin is at 97 including his time at North Dakota, so he is more likely than not going to reach 100. Other than him, Cole Hutson could theoretically reach 100, but currently he is 68 and would need to essentially match his 2nd half of last season when he recorded 34 points from January on.

Maybe a harder one to figure out, but what is the shortest period that BU has ever played - fewest whistles/face offs etc? - Sean T

We weren’t able to find that out, but we were able to find the “shortest game” in terms of total time. Looking at box scores from 2002-03 through 2020-21, the shortest game from start time to end time in the box scores was surprisingly the 2006 Beanpot Final which took a minuscule 1hr and 37 minutes. In that span there were 9 games that were less than 2 hours per the box score:

• 02/13/2006 (1:37)

• 10/08/2010 (1:44)

• 03/23/2013 (1:49)

• 03/08/2009 (1:50)

• 12/19/2014 (1:54)

• 10/12/2013 (1:55)

• 03/06/2009 (1:56)

• 11/16/2008 (1:59)

• 11/17/2013 (1:59)

How does the age of the team compare to teams of the past, and how well does a team this young usually perform season/tournament wise? — Sean

This year’s team is the 15th oldest BU team since 1930, and the oldest BU team since 1971-72. Below is a chart of the average age of every BU team since 1970-71 vs. their winning percentage, with national champions marked with stars.

What’s the lowest rank (via pairwise) a team has been going into the NCAA playoffs that went on to win the championship?

We’ll just go back to 2013-14, since that is the first year of our current selection process (i.e., no TUC and the addition of Quality Win Bonus and Home/Away weighting). Only twice has a team below the 1 seeds—in that span—won the National Championship, Providence in 2015, the 15th overall seed and Minnesota-Duluth in 2018, the 12th overall seed. In that span, a #1 seed has won 7 of 9 national championships. Below is a table of the finish of each seed and seed band from 2013-14 to 2023-24.

Do you have any insight into the jersey game this year? I’m curious if they plan on bringing back the red 1950 threads, or if any other throwbacks are planned for the future. Always love your jersey stat breakdowns! — BParner

I don’t have any specific insight on the jersey selection for the season. BU does tend to break out the “Garrity Era” throwback for the NCAA tourney. However, the last time they wore them was the disastrous 2024 Hockey East Championship game, so there is a chance they’re kept in the closet for the bit longer. The Terriers have yet to wear the white version of their 70s throwback with the Terrier on the front, so that could potentially make an appearance.

Since Chewy's a senior this year, any clue where he'll be headed after BU?

Depending on how the rest of the season goes, he has a chance to get signed to a pro deal. In the summer, he was invited to the Boston Bruins Development Camp, so there is some interest in NHL teams to at least look into adding him to their system.

BU has now started with a record of 9-6-1. What other seasons have they started with that record (if any) and what was the final result of their year? —Sean

BU has never started exactly 9-6-1. They’ve had 9 wins through 16 games in 3 different seasons, including this season, both of the other seasons 1958-59 and 2016-17 they started 9-5-2 through 16 games. In 1958-59, they finished 13-8-2 and lost to Boston College in the Beanpot Championship game. In 2016-17, they finished 24-12-3, losing to Harvard in the Beanpot Champion game and losing to BC in Hockey East Tournament Semifinals. They also lost to Minnesota Duluth in overtime of the 2017 West Regional Final, a night after beating North Dakota in 2OT on a Charlie McAvoy game winning goal.

Who is the shortest goalie in d1 hockey history? (Men’s or women’s)

In terms of Women’s the shortest that I could find were a few players that were 5’1’’ including former Terrier Ashlyn Aiello (2015-18). On the men’s side of things, 5’6’’ seems to be around the lower limit with Corey Winer of Army (1996-00), Henry Levin (1955-58) and Dennis Doyle (1967-68) both of BU among them.

What are the BU teams' records when not taking a penalty?

There are really two answers to this question: BU taking absolutely 0 PIM and BU not giving their opponent a power play. We will look at both.

The men, since 2002-03, have recorded 0 PIM four times and hold a 1-3-1 record, the last time coming in the 2024 West Regional Final when neither team recorded a penalty. When they allow 0 power plays, they are 4-3-2.

The women went 17 years and 628 games before they played a game where they did not take a penalty. The first time being coach Brian Durocher’s last game at the helm February 22nd, 2023 vs. Merrimack in the Hockey East Tournament Quarterfinal. The team had, one time earlier, a game in which they didn’t allow their opponent a power play, November 25th, 2022 vs. Yale. The Terriers have yet to win a game where they did not commit a penalty, holding an 0-3-0 record.

Can you explain the Circle of Suck?

The Circle of Suck, sometimes referred to as the Circle of Parity, illustrates that any can beat anyone any night in college hockey. It’s a way to tell any other fan that your team is better than their team because your team beat another team who beat another team that beat their team.

“The Circle” involves Graph Theory, which is the study of mathematical structures meant to show the relationship between objects, in this case college hockey teams. A graph consists of nodes and edges, in our case each “nods” represent a team and each “edge” represents a game played between a team. More specifically, our graph is a directed graph, meaning each edge has a direction to it pointing from the winner of a game to the loser of a game.

To get to “The Circle” we first must get all the edges (re: wins) for each pair of teams, that graph looks like this:

Once we have the full graph set up, we find what in graph theory is called a cycle. A cycle is a path that goes from one node to back to that node, in which no node appears more than once. In a directed graph like the one that we have, you can only follow the arrow (i.e., directed edge) in the direction it points. For example, BU beat UConn who beat UMass who beat BU (BU→UConn→UMass→BU), that would be a valid cycle in our graph but the inverse (BU→UMass→UConn→BU) would not because although there is a directed edge (read: arrow) from BU to UMass, there is not one from UConn to BU, since they have only played 1 game and BU won.

So now we go through and find the longest cycle, i.e., one that contains every team in the sport. We start at a node, then start following the edges and see how far we can get without hitting the same node twice, until we reach our starting node. Eventually we find a path around the sport that connects every team together, and there we have the “Circle of Suck”.

What is the best attended season since BU moved to Agganis, and how does attendance contribute to winning percentage? — Max

The best attended season was, unsurprisingly, the first full season at Agganis Arena, 2005-06. There doesn’t really appear to be any correlation between attendance and winning percentage.

There is no correlation between goal differential and attendance, though weirdly BU only has one loss with attendance less than 2800.

What is the all-time goal differential between BC and BU? — @_brendanm14

The current goal differential in the Green Line Rivalry is +22 in favor of BU. The highest it has ever been is +76 in favor of BU, which was reached twice: December 7th, 1997—at Conte Forum, a 5-1 win—and February 14th, 2000—a 4-1 win in the 2000 Beanpot Championship Game.

What is the largest combined margin of victory over a common opponent by the men's and women's team?

In 2008-09 and 2011-12, the men’s and women’s team combined for a margin of victory of +24 over Maine (10 M, 14 W) and New Hampshire (11 M, 13 W), respectively. Last season’s combined MOV over Vermont at +22 (12 M, 10 W) comes in at 4th, just one behind a combined +23 vs. Vermont (3 M, 20 W) in 2014-15.

Which men’s players have the highest points per minute this season?

Quinn Hutson and Cole Eiserman lead the way in points per minute. Surprising, Tristan Amonte has 2 points in just 55 minutes of ice time. Hutson and Eiserman record a point about every 16 minutes on the ice.

What would it look like to generate a BU line chart based on ranking players by xG% (like top 3 players at their position being top line, then next 3 are line 2, etc.)

Here’s what a line chart based on xG% would look like:

The top two lines both have all players over 50% GF%, with the third line having close to both of its wingers near 50%.

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Per your game score model, who has been the best and worst players on the men’s team thus far? — Eli Cloutier

So far this season, Quinn Hutson (16.0561) is far and away the top player on the BU men’s team, joined closely Matt Copponi (9.2961) and Shane Lachance (9.2111). Gavin McCarthy is the “worst” in terms of game score, but some of that comes down to playing top defensive minutes.

What is the lowest ranking BU has had in November and still made the NCAA tournament?

Though, the pairwise should not technically be calculated till the end of the season. We’ll take a look at where BU stood in the pairwise1 since 2004-05 on November 1st, November 15th, November 30, and their final pairwise placement.

The lowest that BU has been in a year that they made the tournament was 33 in 2017-18, though they did win the Hockey East tournament to earn the automatic bid that season. In non-auto bid years, it was 28. Heck, last season they started November at 22 and ended up as 1 seed. Long story short, what the pairwise says in November does not matter, do not care about the pairwise in November, do not worry about the pairwise in November, do not even look at the pairwise in November.

How many instances have there been of a backup goalie taking the starting job? If any, who? And how did they perform after becoming the starter (i.e, if Lacroix takes over starting in front of Caron) — Official Bubbah

We don’t really have the data on that per se. I guess the only instance I can think of is Matt O’Connor taking the starting job in 2014-15, after Sean Maguire went out at the end of the previous season with a bad concussion. The two had been a goalie tandem for both their freshman and sophomore years. O’Connor backstopped the team to the 2015 National Championship game as a junior with Maguire out. I don’t see Lacroix taking over fully, if he does play consistently it’ll probably be in a tandem.

BU famously came back from a 6-2 deficit against Maine to hand them their only loss of their incredible 1992-93 title season, 7-6. Is that the biggest comeback for BU against Maine? At Maine? — defkit11

Yes, that is the biggest comeback for BU against Maine. BU has only beaten Maine 6 times when they allowed 5+ goals. Though if we want to be technically they did earn a win against Maine when allowing 8 goals and only scoring 1, when Maine had to forfeit games in 1991-92, due to ineligible players.

Where do you get the advanced stats from that you post through the newsletter? Are those accessible to the general public? — Sean

The advanced stats we post come from Instat, it is a paid service that has advanced stats for many leagues at all different levels of hockey, including NCAA Men’s DI. While they are not available, free for all, CollegeHockeyNews.com has begun adding some advanced stats. They’ve had Corsi in the past, but now they have TOI and a basic xG (though its accuracy is a bit dubious), a variant of Game Score, that they termed CHIP.

Can others join the BU hockey stats program? I'm really interested in researching statistics on NCAA DI hockey teams.

Yes! Anyone is welcome to join the BU hockey stats program (I’m just an alum with a hobby, not affiliated with the team or university). There are some great resources for finding interesting facts and stats: BUHockeyStats.com (shameless plug), CollegeHockeyNews’ Almanac, team media guides, CollegeHockeyStats.net (old box scores), old newspapers. Everyone is free to submit a stat or note that they find. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in helping or contributing at all.

How can I support BUHockeyStats?

I do this because I enjoy it and like to share random stats and notes. I don’t need financially support, the only support I need is just for everyone to enjoy and share any interesting stats or notes I post. However, if you really want to financially support BUHockeyStats we sell merch in our TeePublic store, or you can give directly to us on Ko-Fi.