M. Hockey Gears Up For Beanpot

One week ago, Noah Welch addressed the Beanpot Press Luncheon crowd in a suit and a tie. And as much press as the 109th captain of Harvard hockey has gotten over the course of his career, he couldn’t quite mask the childish excitement in his voice.

Welch is a second-round NHL draft pick, one widely touted as one of the best two-way defensemen college hockey has to offer—but he is also a Brighton native, a skater who took in his first Beanpot as a seven-year-old in the erstwhile Boston Garden, and he has wanted that tournament trophy ever since.

“If we were [pretending to be] pro guys,” he said of his street-hockey youth, “we were going to be playing for the Stanley Cup. If we were college guys, we were going to be playing for the Beanpot.”

It’s a sentiment surely shared on a Crimson squad that boasts seven Massachusetts natives. For them, the Boston College-Boston University-Harvard-Northeastern shuffle isn’t a tournament—it is the tournament.

“The excitement when you win it is secondary to everything else,” explained Boston College coach Jerry York, originally from Watertown, who has won two Beanpots at the helm of the Eagles program and one as a player, in 1965. “It’s the be-all-and-end-all.”

And York isn’t the only one to say so.

Welch was not alone in remarking that growing up, he was entirely unaware of the existence of an NCAA title. Instead, it was this Boston tournament, the perennial occupant of February’s first two Mondays, to which he looked.

It is a Beantown institution, one steeped in more than five decades of tradition and one bestowing upon its annual winner a sense of history that accompanies no other event.

Somerville product Jack Parker has earned 17 Beanpot titles as coach of Boston University, and he deems the tournament a “highlight of the college hockey season,” explaining much of the drama is the result of the setup: “It’s the local guys against each other.”

Of the 104 skaters that fill the four rosters this year, one of every three hails from the state of Massachusetts. More than 40 percent of the group was born in New England, and another sizeable chunk of the players attended New England high schools to play hockey.

And if ice hockey is an acquired taste, a regional sport that is slowly suffering in the warmer sections of the United States, then the Beanpot at least demonstrates the continuing passion Boston has for the game.

“I don’t think you can really, fully appreciate what it means to all the local guys,” said Crimson goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris, who grew up in Illinois, explaining that in this, his senior year and fourth chance in the tournament, “I definitely understand it a little more.”

And then there is that one thing that Grumet-Morris and his teammates—be they southern or northern or Midwestern or Canadian—all understand perfectly clearly: Harvard has not won the Beanpot Trophy since 1993.

In fact, the program hasn’t even made the finals since 1998, and so not one current Crimson skater has ever experienced anything but a first-round Beanpot loss.

Harvard has traditionally faltered in the 53-year history of the tournament, posting a .442 win percentage that ranks third of the four teams. Northeastern, the least storied of the college quartet, sits at the bottom with a .389 record, while Boston College is a solid .567 and Boston University a dominant .712.

Harvard’s poor performances have often been blamed a relatively late exam schedule that causes the Beanpot to fall just a few games into the resumption of play after weeks of break.

In the last six years, for example, the Crimson posted just a 2-8-2 record post-exams, with rustiness and a loss of focus fingered as the likely culprits.

Harvard skaters and coaches have openly declared that 2-8-2 mark the enemy this time around, and four straight wins since exam-break—by a collective margin of 22-5—speak to a new and disciplined Crimson attitude and a clearer focus.

Though Harvard is one of only five teams to earn NCAA Tournament berths for the last three years, two came via postseason runs rather than stellar regular seasons. But at 14-5-2 (11-4-1 ECAC), this year’s Crimson squad has only improved with time.

Said York of the team, one that has already beaten both Boston College and Boston University, “they’ve been to the national tournament three years in a row, so they were good. But this year, they’re better than that.”

Rookie Crimson coach Ted Donato ’91, who was a member of Harvard’s 1989 team that won both the Beanpot and the national championship, said that he hopes his charges will now learn “the joy of winning the Beanpot.”

Donato, who hails from Dedham, spent his early days at Catholic Memorial—the same high school Parker attended.

It’s a small world, after all, the college hockey circuit in Boston. A quick glance through the roster of any of the four teams will offer recurrences of St. Sebastian’s, Cushing Academy, and the like.

Harvard junior Tom Walsh grew up in Arlington, and in 1974, his uncle, Ed, was the first recipient of the Eberly Award for the goaltender with the best save percentage. The elder Walsh played for Boston University, and the younger explains that the dream of playing for a Beanpot shaped, in large part, his college decision.

Crimson forward Rob Flynn, who calls Canton, Mass. home, said, “to win it would be something real special.”

It is a title the entire Harvard squad would like to win, one that would return the local bragging rights to a school that has not always held them. But for the local products, the Beanpot is something more. And for the local seniors, tonight is the first step in one last chance.

“This is it,” Welch said definitively. “The Beanpot is it. It’s the championship I want to win.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.