Greg Brown's seat at Boston College is warm, not hot yet
BC is 2-5-2, out of the poll and 48th in the NPI after Vermont took five of six points at Conte Forum.
Boston College isn't firing Greg Brown in November, and it shouldn't. But the seat is warm now, and the line combinations are the reason.
The Eagles are 2-5-2. They're out of the USCHO top 20 for the first time since Brown's first season. The Ferda number is the one that matters in March: BC sits No. 48 in the NPI. That isn't a bubble résumé. It belongs to a team that needs a winter-long run of quality wins just to reach the tournament conversation.
How it got here
Last weekend was the whole season in two nights.
Vermont beat BC 5-2 in the opener at Conte Forum. In the rematch, the Eagles led 4-2 with about four minutes left, gave up two, and lost the shootout.
The shootout winner came from Michael Hagens, a former Eagle, which is the kind of detail Chestnut Hill remembers. Vermont left town with five of a possible six points and the top spot in Hockey East.
Here's the tell. Vermont's top line has played all eight games together. Brown has reshuffled his forwards constantly, and Dean Letourneau has bounced between linemates across three series. Constant line juggling in November is what a coaching staff does when it's still searching for chemistry it expected to have by Halloween.
The case for Brown
The résumé is real. He's 95-45-10 since taking over in 2022. He took BC to the national title game in 2024, losing 2-0 to Denver, and the Eagles were a No. 1 seed the next spring before Denver ended it again, 3-1.
He won the Spencer Penrose Award as national coach of the year in 2024, and he has a Beanpot.
The case against is the trend. BC is 22-20-3 since the start of last season. The 2024 roster had Will Smith, Cutter Gauthier, Gabe Perrault and Ryan Leonard. That concentration of talent doesn't come through Chestnut Hill every year, so the coaching staff has to carry considerably more of the load now.
Kessler's call
BC goes to UMass on Friday at 7 p.m. and gets the Minutemen back at Conte Forum on Saturday at 7. My call: the Eagles take at least three of the six points. If they don't, the conversation stops being a column and starts being a question for the athletic director.
The standard at Boston College is a national championship banner, not a respectable split. Brown understands that expectation better than anybody, and he has until February to demonstrate this roster can meet it.
