The College Hockey tradition continues!
Just the Facts
- What is it?: A round robin tournament featuring the four largest schools in the Boston area: Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, and Northeastern University facing off
- Where is it?: TD Garden, Boston, MA
- What are the Stakes?: Your university’s name on the trophy and on the banner, your name in the record books, and your sweater hanging up in the lower bowl for all to see at TD Garden events.
- Where can I watch: NESN!
Team Previews
Boston College
- Overall Record: 19-4-1
- Conference Record: 12-3-1, 1st in Hockey East
- Rank (Poll): 1
- Rank (Pairwise): 1
- Leading Scorer: Ryan Leonard, with 22 goals in 24 games.
It’s been a hot minute since BC has been able to hoist the Beanpot, but if there’s an Eagles team that can win it convincingly? This is probably the one to do it.
The Eagles have been on a rampage this year which has seen them pretty convincingly drop goal after goal after goal on their competition; walking into the tournament on a 7 game winning streak, and are all but assumed to be finalists for the Hockey East Championship and hell, maybe even the national title if they can keep up the pace set by Ryan Leonard’s ridiculous goalscoring acumen.
While Leonard seems to be the easy point to stop for the other three teams, the Eagles have supplemented him well with players like James Hagens, Gabe Perreault, Teddy Stiga, and Andre Gasseau, all of whom are having excellent years in Maroon and Gold. Add to that a pair of extremely strong goaltenders in Jacob Fowler and Jan Korec, both of which are playing at a .920 SV% clip? Boston College comes into the Beanpot as less a team to beat, and more a team to overcome. If you wanted to know what a favorite looks like, you’re looking at it.
Also, Dean Letourneau is here! Where is he on the scoring list? Don’t worry about it!
Boston University
- Overall Record: 14-9-1
- Conference Record: 10-5-1
- Rank (poll): 8th
- Rank (pairwise): 8th
- Leading Scorer: Quinn Hutson and Cole Eiserman, with 15 goals in 22 games played.
Hockey East is a crammed conference at the moment, and BU has been keeping up as best they can with a resurgent rival and the fruits of Coach Ben Barr’s labors up in Orono.
While they may not have a Ryan Leonard, they’ve managed to simulate the experience with Cole Eiserman, Ryan Greene, and Quinn Hutson, and have been able to spread out their scoring a little more evenly than their erstwhile Newton-based foe.
Where they might stumble however is in one critical area: the back-end. They have had to play some barn-burner hockey in order to get where they are, neither full-time goalie has been perfect, and haven’t exactly had the best record against ranked opponents as a result. That bodes ill for the Terriers; especially since they’ve been beaten twice in a weekend by BC just over a week ago. If the Terriers win, it will be because they’ve decided to break a single-game scoring record. Mercifully, they’ve been given Harvard to start out, so if their prevailing narratives continue, they should be okay.
That said, as I have mentioned before, Cole Eiserman is from my hometown, so I hope they win the Beanpot in a walk.
Northeastern
- Overall Record: 9-12-3
- Conference Record: 4-9-3
- Rank: Unranked in either poll
- Leading Scorer: Jack Williams and Dylan Hryckowian, with 12 goals in 24 games.
As it turns out, being good and staying good are pretty hard, especially in Hockey East. Northeastern’s learning this the hard way this year.
While the Lady Huskies cruised to an easy Women’s Beanpot victory last month, the Men will likely have to scratch and claw and bite just to survive in theirs. While the law offices of Jack Williams, Cam Lund, and Dylan Hryckowian have done their best to keep the Huskies afloat, the rest of the team has yet to actively take a stab at joining them, with the closest player in points to any one of them being Vinnie Borgesi. After that? Steep drop off.
Cam Whitehead in net has played well, but it’s painfully clear that he’d have to be on Devon Levi’s level just to haul the Huskies back over the line of .500, and he’s not getting nearly the kind of help Levi got. Like I said, this will be a struggle for Northeastern.
Or it would be, were it not for the unusual fact that the Beanpot seems to bring out the best in the Huskies recently.
They scratched and clawed their way to a win over Harvard last year, and then shocked BU in overtime. They were more than willing to go to a shootout with BU the year prior and ended up winning that one too. By all accounts, they were not always the best team coming into the tournament, but they figured out a way regardless. This X-Factor, something I cannot pin to a stat, keeps me from ever truly counting them out, even if I know they may not be able to handle BC.
Harvard
- Overall Record: 7-11-2
- Conference Record: 6-7-2
- Rank: Unranked in either poll
- Leading Scorer: Casey Severo, with 8 goals in 20 games.
If nothing else, Harvard’s record accurately represents a lot of it’s worst stereotypes; distinctly mediocre, and probably buoyed by wealth they were born into.
Harvard isn’t even bad in an exciting or interesting way; they just don’t score enough and don’t defend or tend the goal well enough to matter in the grand scheme of College hockey right now. Harvard’s inability to keep up with the commoners (for a Harvard definition of the term) has them staring up at Colgate and Quinnipiac as the current juggernauts in that conference, and they’ve been left as a mushy middle with Clarkson and Cornell. A big part of it is that unless they’re playing another ivy league like Brown or Yale, they just don’t seem to have the ability to generate enough momentum to keep a good win going; they win one, they lose two. They win two games? Immediately return to step A. It’s been a deeply frustrating season for the Crimson, one that I assume has ended in a great many calls to Papa to fix this.
It falls primarily on Joe Miller, Mick Thompson, and Joe Severo to try and pull the Crimson out of the ditch they’re currently in. While I appreciate their efforts, I think the nicest thing we can say about Harvard is that they are a dark horse to win. Even if they come out of their game against Northeastern unscathed, one of the other schools seem poised to beat them soundly.
Also Mason Langenbrunner is here. He’s got 6 points (3 goals, 3 assists) in 20 games. Good for him!
The Schedule
Tonight:
- 5pm: BU vs. Harvard
- 8pm: Northeastern vs. BC
Championship Game – Feb. 10th:
- 4:30pm – Consolation Game
- 7:30pm – Championship Game