JOE WHITNEY
Boston College
Jr. | F | Reading, Mass.
Joe Whitney welcomes his brother to the Heights in 2009-10, and hopes to lead the Eagles to the kind of success he enjoyed as a freshman.
Key statistics: As a freshman riding shotgun with Nate Gerbe on the power play, Joe Whitney notched 40 assists and amassed an impressive 51 points. Once Gerbe went pro with the Buffalo Sabres following BC’s 2007-08 NCAA championship, Whitney endured a bit of a sophomore slump. Without Gerbe’s finishing touch, Whitney ended up with only 15 points in 36 games. Eagles coach Jerry York attempted to spark his playmaker, and even shifted Whitney back to the defense position for a handful of games last season to take advantage of his smooth passing skills and instincts for the game. Whitney went from recording the second-highest assist season for a freshman in the history of the BC hockey program to a forward that didn’t even crack 10 assists as a second-year player.
What He Does: Whitney is a playmaking wing who likes to have the puck on his stick, and the 5-foot-6, 164-pounder is at his very best when he’s given both time and space to operate offensively. Part of York’s thinking in temporarily placing Whitney on the blueline was his overwhelming knack for manning one of the points on BC’s power play. Whitney had five power-play scores as a freshman, but was down to only one PP strike as a sophomore. Whitney doesn’t have the strongest shot in the world and isn’t a speed merchant on skates within Hockey East, but he thinks the game as well as anyone on the Eagles roster. Whitney’s biggest need is a partner on his line with the ability to consistently finish as Gerbe clearly had when Whitney enjoyed his bountiful freshman season.
The Bigger Picture: Whitney’s younger brother Steve will join the Eagles as a freshman this season, and arrives on the Chestnut Hill campus with an even more outsized reputation than big brother Joe. It could be a prudent move for York to get a gauge on the on-ice sibling chemistry early, and potentially move the explosive scoring brother duo onto the same line. The 18-year-old younger Whitney brother won an Independent School League championship with prep school Lawrence Academy last winter, and then scored more than a point-per-game for the Omaha Lancers during a quick 12-game audition at the USHL level. Joe feeding the puck to Steve could be another sibling story (Brian and Steve Gionta, Brooks and Andrew Orpik) to travel through the Eagles pipeline under York’s tenure.
Boston College coach Jerry York on Whitney: “You can’t teach what he has. He has able to see people out on the ice and he’s almost like a point guard in basketball with the way he can set things up and know where players are - without staring at them. His head is always up on the ice, and that’s a rare trait and a pretty remarkable one to have as a player.”
Special contributor Joe Haggerty wrote this story for InsideCollegeHockey.com. Follow Haggerty at twitter.com/HackswithHaggs
