Frozen Four 2012: Boston College Keeps Playing for the Name on the Front

Boston College senior captain Tommy Cross mentioned nine of his program’s alumni by name during his portion of Friday’s press conference at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Cross and nine of his teammates will join the increasingly less exclusive company of eight of those nine predecessors by suiting up for a second NCAA national championship game.

Among many others, Mike Mottau, Scott Clemmensen, Brian Gionta, Mike Brennan, Matt Price, Joe Whitney, John Muse and Brian Gibbons all played for the crown either two or three times in their four years at Chestnut Hill.

The same will soon apply to Cross, Patch Alber, Barry Almeida, Paul Carey, Brian Dumoulin, Parker Milner, Pat Mullane, Chris Kreider, Edwin Shea and Steven Whitney when they face Ferris State on Saturday night.

“Everyone wants to wear maroon and gold,” Cross said to the Frozen Four press corps. “There’s a saying in our locker room, ‘Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.’

“It’s amazing how much contact (current) players and coaches have with players from the last 10 years.”

Cross and his fellow seniors, and the goaltender Milner and his fellow juniors, are now in the same position that the upperclassmen were in at this time two seasons ago. They are trying not only to claim themselves a second national title, but also to leave an ongoing tradition of triumph for the incumbent freshmen and sophomores to grow on.

Milner was Muse’s backup when the Eagles throttled Wisconsin, 5-0, in the 2010 finals. With that, the then-junior Muse had backstopped his second Frozen Four championship, having done the same as a rookie against Notre Dame in 2008.

After a rocky road to claiming Muse’s vacancy this season, Milner is seeking his second ring and his first token of credit for a national championship. However, he insists there is no personal incentive percolating in him.

“I don’t think about it as my own championship game,” he said. “It’s our championship game. That experience (in 2010) was just as special for me on the bench as it would have been if I was on the ice.

“That was an experience that we’ll never forget, and I think that’s a huge driving factor for the older guys trickling down to the younger guys. We know what it’s like to win one, and we want it that much more (for them) having won one.”

Just by appearing in the semifinals, this year’s Eagles ensured that all of York’s original recruiting classes—dating back to his arrival in 1994 and up through at least 2015—will have had the experience of playing in at least one Frozen Four.

Under York’s tutelage, every senior class with the exception of 2005 has been in a championship game and 10 of them have won it all at least once. Graduates from 2010 and 2011 made their tracks on Chestnut Hill with two ultimate victories on their transcript.

For Cross, Milner and Co., Saturday’s objective will be to get an NCAA title for two more classes and get it over with before drop-passing their leadership roles to them.

“The bar keeps getting raised,” said Cross. “Each class that comes in here, each team that takes the ice has high and higher expectations, and I think that just pushes us to be better.

“It’s our responsibility to continue that. We’re honored and feel privileged to have that opportunity. It gets us excited to have that challenge in front of us.”

Quotes for this story were obtained first-hand at Friday’s press conference.