Beanpot '86: A Boston Hockey Tradition Continues

College hockey is a sport which, depite the fearsome spectre of Hockey East, has never really made the big time.

The game remains a notch below the professional team sports and college basketball and football. Nationally, college hockey doesn't get much big press--even the remarkable story of RPI's 38-game unbeaten streak.

College hockey remains a local phenomenon, a ritual reserved for moms and dads, for classmates and former players. Each program develops a rich, individual tradition and a devoted, knowledgable following.

Most of all, the game--for all of its speed, skill and violence--remains innocent, free of the corrupting influences of big money and big television.

Hockey has always had a special place in Boston. Youth hockey flourishes here and skates are on the mind of every five-year-old at Christmas time. The town has one great pro and four outstanding college traditions.

And when these four programs merge, they come together into a delirious whole--a union of tradition that captures the spirit of a city that has been so often divided and so often reunited.

The Beanpot Hockey Tournament is in one sense an opportunity to determine which of the four Hub hockey teams is the best. But that's missing the point; the best teams never win--the worst one often does--and winning doesn't really seem to be the central feature of the competition.

There will be plenty of time and playoff games to determine which of the four teams is tops; it is too early still to know for certain. February bragging rights fade in March.

When the club that does emerge victorious skates around the Garden ice holding up the small pot of beans (no real beans but a damn realistic-looking pot), the crowd cheers. But the celebration is not only for the winners, although they certainly love to bask in the crowd's adulation--it is a ritual affirmation of the sport itself.

And of a very provincial city's very provincial devotion to it.

What's at stake in the Beanpot is the respect of the common hockey community. Only once a year do the devoted gather together to pay tribute to a sport and a city and the result is a celebration that promises only joy.

For the players, the chance to play these two games is a wonderful bonus. It is a time apart from their daily grinds of chalkboards, films tapings, practices, games, more practices and, at least for three of the schools, 2000-mile road trips.

The games don't count in the standings but they count perhps where it is most important: in the hearts of the moms, dads, roommates and oldsters who have been flocking to see these teams for, well, forever.

There's nothing so special and so distinctive about the Beanpot Tournament as its emphasis on the positives of sport; the players are there to have fun, in a great old tradition-filled building, with the chance to dream perchance that one day they may return proudly clad in the sweater of a professional team.

It is, in short, the chance to taste for 120 precious minutes the dream they have lived.