The countdown to Boston College men’s hockey’s season opener against Quinnipiac is nearing the 50-day mark until the Eagles are back on the ice at Conte Forum donning maroon and gold sweaters.
By a few measures, BC’s 2024-25 campaign was quite a letdown, considering the fact that the Eagles entered the 2025 NCAA Division I men’s hockey tournament as the No. 1 seed and failed to make it out of a regional.
Denver, which defeated BC in the 2024 NCAA men’s hockey championship, 2-0, once again sank the top program in the nation in the 2025 New Hampshire Regional final, 3-1, before falling in the Frozen Four to the eventual NCAA national champions, Western Michigan.
Before the end of the 2024-25 season, BC lost its two highest-producing forwards, Ryan Leonard (Washington Capitals) and Gabe Perreault (New York Rangers), to professional opportunities in the National Hockey League, including the reigning Mike Richter Award-winning goalie Jacob Fowler (Montreal Canadiens), who finished runner-up for the same award in 2023-24 as a freshman.
Although NCAA hockey teams are now eligible to recruit and pick up talent from the Canadian Hockey League and its member leagues, BC head coach Greg Brown has not yet made a noticeable dent in the recruiting realm from the CHL as opposed to programs like BC’s rival, Boston University, perennial NCAA title contenders like Michigan State, or up-and-coming programs in the Big Ten like Penn State.
With 53 days to go until puck drop, here are some bold predictions for the BC men’s hockey program in 2025-26.
James Hagens will be a Hobey Baker Award finalist
A returning sophomore forward, Hagens averaged a point per game—37 points in just as many appearances—as a college hockey rookie last season for the Eagles, but was projected to storm into the NCAA landscape at a far more prolific rate before he arrived in Chestnut Hill over a year ago.
Hagens was viewed as the clear choice for the No. 1 overall selection in the 2025 National Hockey League Draft before he had even touched the ice at the collegiate level, and the hype did not quite live up to those extremely lofty expectations.
In the shadow of BC offensive stalwarts such as Cutter Gauthier and Will Smith—who were both Hobey Baker Award finalists as freshmen in the two years prior to Hagens’ arrival—the Hauppauge, N.Y. native struggled to manufacture the same level of offensive production that came so effortlessly for him with the U.S. National Team Development Program in 2023-24 and before.
But Hagens’ confidence level has taken a turn in the positive direction this offseason.
After the Boston Bruins selected Hagens with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, he announced his decision to return to the Heights for the 2025-26 season with a breath of fresh air and a clear pathway into the foreseeable future with development leading the list of Hagens’ priorities.
A Hockey East All-Rookie Team selection in 2024-25, Hagens finished third on the team in points and second in assists with 26. His goal tally of 11 in his first collegiate season didn’t blow off the roof of the Hockey East—or the NCAA for that matter—but looking back at his statistics for USNTDP, assists always came more frequently for the rising sophomore.
Hagens appeared in 58 games for the U.S. Under-18 team in 2023-24, registering 39 goals and 63 assists for 102 points—the seventh-most in a single season in USNTDP history.
There are a few reasons that Hagens’ offensive output decreased in his first NCAA season. The pace of the game is obviously one, but the chemistry that he took years to develop with his linemates at USNTDP did not translate well to the linemates he received in his first year at BC, which changed frequently.
As opposed to two seasons ago, when Greg Brown inherited a full line from USNTDP—consisting of Smith, Leonard, and Perreault—Hagens came into the program without having that combined experience with the majority of his teammates.
The only forward he played with at USNTDP in the same class as him was Teddy Stiga, but Brown often paired Hagens with Leonard and Perreault, which ultimately led to critics comparing his play to Smith’s, who flourished with the that pair of forwards—only because they played together multiple seasons in a row before arriving at BC.
Hagens’ talent was not lacking by any means last year. His plus-minus rating of +21 last year was among the NCAA’s best for first-year players.
With pieces around him who he has grown comfortable playing with after a year of exposure to the college game, those numbers are bound to increase—enough to surely land him in contention for a Hobey Baker Award.
BC will never be the No. 1 team in the nation in 2025-26
It’s difficult to tell exactly how the Eagles will fare this upcoming season without the likes of Fowler, Leonard, and Perreault, but the team is likely not going to be in the running for the No. 1 rank in Division I NCAA men’s hockey week in and week out because of those key losses.
Despite failing to capture an NCAA championship, BC spent more time than any program in the nation as the No. 1 team during the regular season throughout the past two seasons combined. The sustainability required for that to happen for a third consecutive year seems just too far out of reach, especially when a new goalie is in play.
In addition to that, due to new legislation which enables players from the CHL to have the ability to transfer over to the NCAA, there will inevitably be less parity in 2025-26 and beyond.
Teams that have not consistently played in Frozen Fours in the past decade may reappear as NCAA title contenders with CHL recruits in the mix.
Penn State is the best example of a program which could make this jump after the signing of the projected 2026 No. 1 overall pick, Gavin McKenna.
Furthermore, programs on the rise in Hockey East, like Providence and Maine, have played against arguably the best offensive rosters constructed in BC men’s hockey program history in the past two seasons.
While the Eagles are inheriting some outstanding, young offensive talent in William Moore from USNTDP, and forwards like Andre Gasseau, Oskar Jellvik, Dean Letourneau, and Will Vote have more experience, the composition of the Eagles’ current forwards does not compare to that of the past two seasons.
Those aforementioned programs and others in Hockey East will be playing against a less-talented group as opposed to BC’s offensive units in 2023-24 and 2024-25 by a considerable margin. This should ultimately worsen the Eagles’ Hockey East record this season and make an impact in the pairwise system which determines NCAA rankings.
If Jan Korec does not pan out, the Eagles have a serious goaltender problem
Arguably the toughest task for Greg Brown heading into the new year is replacing former goalie Jacob Fowler, who is seemingly irreplaceable unless a miracle were to occur.
In his two collegiate seasons, Fowler became one of the Eagles’ most-decorated goalies in program history, earning the 2025 Mark Richter Award for the nation’s best goaltender in college hockey and a Mark Richter semifinalist selection in 2024 as an 18-year old.
In both seasons, Fowler was named the Hockey East Goaltender of the Year and a Hockey East First-Team All-Star, and his all-time 1.63 goals against average (GAA) ranks first in program history.
Fowler finished his career on the Heights with a 57-13-3 record with 10 shutouts, seven of them coming in 2024-25—the third most in a single season by a BC goaltender—and his overall save percentage of .932 ranked in the top five in the NCAA both years.
Junior goalie Jan Korec, a native of Bratislava, Slovakia, is the most likely replacement for Fowler in net, having five total starts under his belt with four wins and an overall goals against average of 1.45, including an overall save percentage of .936.
But with such minimal exposure to the NCAA hockey landscape—and no playoff experience—it is difficult to say whether his numbers in just the five games he has played for the Eagles are a true reflection of how he will pan out over a full season.
If Korec doesn’t, that leaves goaltender responsibilities up to junior Alex Musielak and freshman Louka Cloutier, the latter of whom was selected in the fifth round of the 2024 NHL Draft by the Colorado Avalanche.
However, by the numbers, Musielak and Cloutier have not shown much promise prior to joining the BC men’s hockey program.
Cloutier last played with the USHL’s Chicago Steel in which he recorded a 4.05 goals against average and an 8-18-2 record. Musielak, meanwhile, played in the CCHL for the Kemptville 73’s, tallying a GAA of 3.68 and an 8-7 record. Neither have college hockey experience yet.
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