Boston College’s hockey team has beaten Boston University in a school-record six straight Beanpot encounters, but that’s no guarantee that it’ll happen again Monday night.
“Every year’s different,” observes BC coach Jerry York, whose varsity (18-9-2) has won six of the last seven crowns, the best run in program history. “You won the Masters last year. Are you going to win it this year?”
BU swept its Hockey East series from its taloned archrivals last month for the first time in 15 seasons, but that doesn’t mean that the Terriers (18-7-2), who sit third in the PairWise rankings that determine the seedings for the NCAA tournament, are assuming that they’ll do it on Causeway Street.
“lt’s hard to beat them any time,” says coach David Quinn. “What happened three weeks ago isn’t really going to have much of an effect on Monday night.”
What’s certain is that when these Commonwealth Avenue combatants meet in the 65th edition of Boston’s annual struggle for skating supremacy that one of them will advance to next Monday’s final for the 65th time. The benefit for Harvard (15-5-2) and Northeastern (11-11-5), who together have gone more than a half-century without hoisting the hefty silver bakeware, is that one of them is assured of making it as well.
That would be a welcome novelty for the fifth-ranked Crimson, who last played in the championship game in 2008 and have managed it only thrice since they last won the tournament in 1993.
“We’ve struggled in big games in the past and one of our goals this year was to win the Beanpot,” says co-captain Alexander Kerfoot, whose mates have finished fourth twice in a row. “We think we have the group to do it. Our seniors have been through three consecutive losses. We know what it’s like going through those tough games and we don’t want to have that happen again.”
Harvard is expecting a stiff challenge from Northeastern, which has won seven of their last 10 Beanpot meetings including a 6-0 first-round swatting three years ago. “Northeastern has our attention,” says Crimson coach Ted Donato, whose squad is unbeaten in its last five games after dropping three straight on the road. “We won’t have to let our guys know that [Northeastern’s] last experience here was winning the Hockey East championship. They’re a very talented and dangerous team that I would expect would be a very tough out at the end of the season and we know that we’re going to have to play our best to have success against them.”
The Huskies, who’ve won all but one of their last six outings, have come agonizingly close to doggy heaven during the past decade, reaching the final five times in eight years.
“It’s no secret that we have not had the success that we want to have in this event the last few years,” says coach Jim Madigan, who won the Beanpot twice as a player and once as an assistant. “We’ve been close but we haven’t been able to kick down the door.”
Though the Huntington Hounds won the Hockey East tournament title last year for the first time since their last Beanpot triumph in 1988, it didn’t satisfy the hunger from their starving faithful for Boston baked legumes.
“We had a great year, winning the first championship our team had won in 28 years,” says captain John Stevens. “The first question people asked was, ‘Congrats, that’s great, but when are you going to win a Beanpot?’ You can just see how badly the university wants it and how much it means to the city.”
They don’t hear that question very often at either end of Commonwealth Avenue where BU has won 30 titles and BC has 20. The Eagles have been riding a rare updraft, claiming seven crowns since 2008 after winning only five in the previous 43 years.
“It’s cyclical,” says York. “For a while we couldn’t win a Beanpot game.”
Beating the Terriers for a seventh straight time in the ’Pot will be a challenge after losing 2-1 and 3-0 in January as BU freshman goalie Jake Oettinger stopped 66 shots.
“BU played extremely well against us,” York acknowledges. “They impressed the heck out of me. We hung with them, but they were a touch better than us those two games. Can we make up that difference this particular game? To be determined on Monday night.”
What’s likely is that their 44th meeting in the tournament will come down to a bounce of the puck — 10 of their last meetings have been decided by a goal, six of them in overtime.
“Any time we get together usually someone’s got the goalie pulled,” says Quinn. “They’ve had a great year, we’ve had a great year so far to date. It’s going to make for a very entertaining and exciting night.”
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.