Technically, the Hockey East quarterfinal Friday between Maine and Boston College isn’t an NCAA tournament game. But everyone involved knows that’s exactly what it is.

The winner will move on to the semifinals next weekend at TD Garden and keep its NCAA tournament hopes alive. The loser’s season will be over.

“It’s hard not to have a sense of urgency when it’s a do-or-die game,” said forward Thomas Freel, one of Maine’s two captains.

If you had suggested in October that Maine and Boston College would meet in a conference quarterfinal that would be a must-win for both teams’ NCAA tournament hopes, the idea would’ve raised eyebrows. Maine is the defending Hockey East champion, and BC won the title in 2024. Both played in the past two NCAA tournaments. Both were regional No. 1 seeds last season.

Both had every reason to think in October that potential Hockey East playoff meeting would be for NCAA seeding. Instead, Maine is 18-13-3 and ranked No. 20 in the NPI standings, the system used by the NCAA to determine the tournament field. The Eagles are 19-14-1 and ranked No. 18. At this time of year, a team really needs to be ranked higher than 13th to keep itself off the tournament bubble.

“We’re just going to have to come with our best effort of the season. You don’t get any redos. You don’t get a bad five minutes in the playoffs, because that’s it. It will be really important to get the puck in the zone and get a little bit of traction,” Maine coach Ben Barr said.

How did a pair of hockey teams with lofty expectations get here? Each only needs to look in the mirror.

For Maine, it’s been a season of inconsistency. Too often, the Black Bears look like a team struggling to find its identity, and it has cost them in a lot of close games. Six losses by one goal point to a lack of attention to the little details. Albin Boija, an All-America goalie last season, hasn’t been as sharp as he was a year ago and has lost playing time to freshman Mathis Rousseau, who started the last five games of the regular season. Earlier this week, Barr said he wasn’t sure which goalie would start Friday.

When Maine has played well — and it has in stretches, including a recent four-game winning streak — it’s a team doing the little things, which are magnified in March.

“It starts with simple hockey. When we outwork the other team, when we’re good on the forecheck, when we create the turnovers, that’s when the space opens up to make those kind of plays with the talent we do have,” said senior defenseman Brandon Holt, the team’s other captain.

Boston College closed the regular season with a four-game losing streak, scoring just five goals in those four games. That offensive slump is odd, considering the lineup includes a pair of Boston Bruins first-round draft picks, James Hagens and Dean Letourneau. Earlier in the season, the Eagles could look ahead to the NCAA tournament. Now, that would be foolish, said coach Greg Brown.

“We had thoughts like that earlier in the season, how can we put ourselves in a good position, but right now, it’s one game,” Brown said. “If we’re not all focused on Friday, we don’t get the chance at the other stuff.”

Brown talked about Maine’s physical, in-your-face style of hockey, how the Black Bears will work hard to get the puck behind his defense and grind away to create scoring chances. Barr talked about the Eagles’ speed and offensive skill, and how his team has to be smart with the puck and limit BC’s chances in transition.

Maine and BC split a pair of games at Boston College in November. Barr thinks his team played better in the first game, even though it was a 7-3 loss (Maine won the next night, 3-0). The Black Bears played with energy and had jump, he said. They got good looks at the net, but mistakes with the puck played into the Eagles’ strengths and created odd-man rushes, and the game got away from Maine in the third period.

Friday night, those mistakes will be compounded by the magnitude of the situation. In a must-win game for both teams, every mistake could be a season-ender.