The first two Mondays in February are reserved for a tournament that has become a beloved city tradition. Since 1952, Boston’s college hockey bragging rights and the storied Beanpot trophy have been up for grabs in a game that draws students, alumni, and hockey fans around the region.
Igniting cross-town rivalries, the Beanpot Hockey Tournament invites the four largest hockey programs in Boston—Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, and Harvard—to face-off in a unique two game series at the TD Garden.
"It's an athletic must," the late John "Snooks" Kelley, longtime Boston College coach, said two decades ago. "It's a social must...Four schools separated by the Charles River and the length and breadth of Commonwealth Avenue, regardless of records."
Each Beanpot Tournament goes down as something special, from the spectator-stranding Blizzard of '78 and Northeastern's twenty-eight year quest for the trophy that was finally earned in a overtime goal in 1980, to just last year when the BC men earned their 20th Beanpot championship in the first 1-0 game in tournament history (...and the arena lights went out).
The Beanpot is not to be missed.