Letourneau and Sondreal Continue to Excel: Boston College Men’s Hockey Midweek Thoughts

We’re somehow already almost at the midway point of the season for the Boston College men’s hockey team and if you haven’t checked in for a while, the team is playing pretty darn well. After the Eagles dropped two games to Northeastern to start the Hockey East schedule, they’ve won six of their next seven games. They swept Vermont and UMass before splitting a series with Maine to go 5-1 in conference play before knocking off Notre Dame in their most recent game. They’re a point behind UConn with a game in hand at the top of the Hockey East standings and overall just playing some really good hockey on most nights. And while we’ve still got a long ways to go before we see just how successful this season is, there’s plenty to talk about in terms of what we’ve seen recently that has had the team going on a bit of a hot streak.

LETOURNEAU AND SONDREAL CONTINUE TO IMPRESS

We’ve spent some time talking about Dean Letourneau and Jake Sondreal already this season, but they deserve another mention because these guys are just different players than they were last season. It’s a mixture of noticeable on ice improvement and playing a much more confident game that has these two among the top scorers on the team and making an impact in just about every game they play in.

Letourneau is second on the team in scoring with 14 points in 14 games and Sondreal is right behind him with thirteen. As freshmen last year, the duo combined for just nine points. This is the kind of development you absolutely love to see from second year players, and just from watching them on the ice, you can tell that they’re both playing with a high level of confidence. Just take a look at Letourneau’s goal from this past weekend’s game against Notre Dame

First off, it must be said, great pass from Nolan Joyce to set this whole thing up. But watch Letourneau get himself open in a dangerous position, call for the puck, and then take his time once he gets it on his stick. He’s not rushing because he thinks he needs to make a quick play, he knows exactly how much time he has and exactly what he wants to do to beat the goalie. Wind the clocks back a year and I’m really not sure if he’s finishing that play. This year it felt like a definite goal as soon as he got the puck.

LUKA RADIVOJEVIC QUIETY EXCELLING

There’s honestly a lot to feel pretty good about with this year’s BC team, but one of the most encouraging signs that I’ve seen recently is just how well defenseman Luka Radivojevic has been playing. The freshman has stepped right into a top four role on the team’s blue line and has honestly not looked remotely out of place.

Radivojevic doesn’t have a goal yet on the season, but his eight assists have him at well over a half point per game pace and tied in scoring with Drew Fortescue for most among the team’s defensemen. And most of that has come in the past few weeks, as he had seven assists across a four game stretch back in mid November, including three games with two assists each. But while he came into BC described as an offensive defenseman, he’s been just as impressive playing in his own zone recently.

On a team with some big defensemen, Radivojevic can look a bit undersized being listed at just 5’10”. He’s holding his own in terms of the physical side of his game, however, going into corners to win battles and coming away with the puck against much larger forwards with some regularity. He’s also having a noticeable impact on the team’s breakouts, using his speed and skating ability to turn defense into offense and get the puck out of dangerous areas without much trouble. The fact that he has been able to step in as an undrafted freshman and immediately win the trust of the coaching staff while having such a positive impact on the team says a lot about how strong his play in the first half of the season has been.

WILL TRAEGER AND PAUL DAVEY HAVE THEIR MOMENTS

You know what makes college sports great? Guys like Will Traeger and Paul Davey. The two seniors have struggled to get much consistent ice time in their four years at BC. Davey played in eight games as a freshman and then didn’t see the ice for the past two seasons at all while Traeger’s recent stretch of 12 consecutive games has almost matched his total of 17 from his previous three seasons and was only made possible because of a number of injuries to BC’s forwards. Even when they do get in the lineup, they’re never really getting consistent shifts and they’re always at the bottom of the forward group when it comes to time on ice. It’s got to be a tough ask to show up every day to practice when you know that its unlikely that you’ll ever see much playing time, and to do that consistently for four years? It would be impossible to blame them if they transferred out in search of a team where they could have a larger role.

And yet, they both stayed. And somehow, because this sport just loves to be so, so weird at times, at one point a few weeks ago, they both scored their first collegiate goals on back-to-back nights.

First up was Traeger, who put home a rebound to make turn a 6-3 game into a 7-3 game with 30 seconds left in regulation. An otherwise completely meaningless goal that his teammates celebrated like it was an overtime winner

The next night, it was Paul Davey, who absolutely ripped a one-timer to give his team a 1-0 lead late in the second period. It was Davey’s only game of the season so far and the goal stood as the eventual game winner. Not a bad way to make your impact felt

Four years of working hard and staying ready for their opportunities and they end up scoring their first goals on the same weekend. What a weird, beautiful sport.