HAMMING IT UP: Beanpot Hockey Fans Dwindle

For a school that usually reserves its collective campus pride for those Harvard traditions like The Game, Housing Day, or Commencement, you’re forgetting about another venerable New England institution­—the Beanpot hockey tournament of course.

If you need any enticing storyline to excite you enough to attend the championship on Monday night, consider a Harvard team searching for a way to spark its momentum with seven games left in the season and out-avenge December’s 7-2 loss against these very same Eagles.

What is the Beanpot you might ask?

Put simply, it’s a 56 year-old hockey tradition exclusive to Boston that pits the city’s four college hockey teams against one another every February.

The tournament does not influence Harvard’s ECAC record, but every year, the Crimson places advancing to the championship game and winning it high atop the list of season goals.

To followers of Harvard hockey, I’m telling you nothing new, but I’m not writing this column for you today.

Instead, I’m writing for the people who are not familiar with the Beanpot’s status as a uniquely-Bostonian hockey tradition.

Harvard’s place in that tradition has been easily forgotten for a decade­—though Harvard holds ten titles­—because the Crimson has not won a berth in the championship game since 1998.

That changed on Monday night when Harvard topped the No.14 Northeastern Huskies 3-1 to advance to the final round where the No. 9 Boston College Eagles awaits them.

As I watched Harvard explode into a three-goal lead in the first seven minutes in that round one contest, I played “spot the Harvard fans” from the rafters of the TD Banknorth Garden only to find either whole sections of empty seats or rabid Husky fans perplexed that they really had no one in the crowd to heckle.

But then the jumbotron ended my search for Harvard fans by displaying two boys decked out in their Harvard gear, uniform jerseys and all.

During the TV timeout, the camera jumped between throngs of Northeastern fans in the balcony and these two boys.

I’m still not sure whether the jumbotron cams couldn’t find another Harvard fan or was enticing the Husky student section to boo middle schoolers.

As the three sections of Northeastern fans unleashed boos and incoherent chants on the whole arena each time the kids pointed to the Veritas logo and smirked, something occurred to me: shouldn’t actual Harvard students be the ones getting a kick out of antagonizing the opposing team’s fans? At the Beanpot no less?

Or consider another moment from round one as Eagles and Terriers fans were arriving in the middle of the game in anticipation of the match-up their teams would play later that night at 8 P.M.

As Harvard’s defense repeatedly stifled the Huskies and controlled the puck throughout the game, chants like the Eagles' “Sucks to BU” took over the arena in apparent oblivion to Harvard and Northeastern.

Maybe only a Harvard student from Boston could express such disbelief at the course of these events during the Crimson’s last game.

But for Harvard’s players, especially its seniors, competing in this tournament is an essential part of what it means to skate for the Crimson and play college hockey in Boston.

If Harvard fans can fill the Bright Hockey Center with intense animosity for Cornell each time the Crimson takes the ice against the Big Red, why not bring the same presence and intensity to the setting where some of Harvard hockey’s most historic moments have occurred?

If the ever-present Harvard Band has enough dedication to the Crimson to stand up to hundreds of Huskies fans shouting “we can’t hear you,” help them respond to opposing fans’ jeering with something witty.

Above all else, my message here is simple. Should you have tickets, use them! Go to the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston and cheer on Harvard this Monday night at 8 P.M.!

If you don’t have tickets, find a TV or radio and tune in. Even if you can’t cheer on the Crimson in person, choosing to experience the game at all will help you recognize a great Harvard tradition and feel something of the intensity which Harvard’s players bring to the tournament each and every year.

“After the first five minutes of the [round one] game, I just think everyone on the team who is not from the area understands what it’s all about,” sophomore forward Doug Rogers said.

Hopefully, this unique fan experience of cheering the Crimson to the top of Boston hockey will leave you similarly enlightened. Immerse yourself in the thrill of practicing yet another Harvard tradition, even if no one can predict when the Crimson will have the opportunity to experience it again.

—Staff writer Robert T. Hamlin can be reached at rhamlin@fas.harvard.edu.