Beanpot’s Back Home

As the clock ticked down in the championship game, the numbers 23, 12 and 13 were all the Terriers needed to bring the Beanpot back to the BU campus. The 69th annual men’s Beanpot Tournament took place in TD Garden in front of fans, bands, and media members on Feb. 14, 2022. 

After taking down Harvard one week prior, the Boston University Men’s Hockey Team matched up against cross-town rivals Northeastern University on one of the biggest stages in college hockey.

With just over two minutes to go, number 23 junior forward Domenick Fensore knocked the puck out of the defensive zone and onto the stick of number 12 junior forward Jamie Armstrong. Number 13 sophomore forward Dylan Peterson joined the rush and met Armstrong’s cross-ice pass to center the puck past Northeastern’s freshman goaltender TJ Semptimphelter. A one goal game to bring home trophy number 31.

“The celebration… I saw red,” Peterson said in the post game presser. “I just wanted to go celebrate with my teammates, so I headed to the bench. It was a pretty special moment.”

While the Terriers are coming out of a Beanpot drought, the trophy is no stranger to the Charles River Campus. The 2022 game earned BU its 31st trophy in the nearly 70 years of the tournament, and its first since 2015.

The competition for Boston bragging rights dates back to 1952 and is the quintessential representation of Massachusetts college hockey. Between BU, Boston College, Northeastern and Harvard, thousands of students, alumni and hockey fans flock year after year to TD garden for the game.

In the early years of the series, the BC Eagles dominated. BU’s main rivals won eight of the first 13 tournaments and saw a second resurgence in the 2010s, winning six in seven years. While BU is a Beanpot powerhouse, their Green Line rivals sits right behind them with 20 total wins, and every championship game has featured either BU or BC.

Next in line in the win column is the Harvard Crimson. Like BC, the Crimson saw most of their success in the first decade of the tournament, and they ended a 24-year drought in 2017 when they brought home the Beanpot for the 11th time.

The most threatening team in recent years has been Northeastern. The only team in the tournament to never have hoisted the NCAA trophy, the Huskies started to make their presence known in 2011. Starting that year, the Huskies went to the finals four times in the next five years, but fell to the Terriers or the Eagles each time. In 2018, they won their fifth Beanpot and then went on to win the following two tournaments as well, furthering their title total to seven.

Throughout the history of the competition however, BU has always held the reins, so much so that fans started to call the contest the “BU Invitational.” In terms of championships, BU has won about 45% of total Beanpots, and when making it to the championship game, nearly 80%. 

The mastermind of Terrier Hockey success in the Beanpot comes down to 40-year legendary coach Jack Parker. As a player, he won in each of the three years he played in a scarlet and white jersey and then went on to raise the coveted trophy 21 times as head coach.

Although BU holds the record for most consecutive wins with six, Northeastern’s three-peat threw a wrench in the Beanpot’s regular course. BU hadn’t won since 2015 – thanks to an overtime winner by current Boston Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelyck – putting extra emphasis on the 2022 series as the first truly “normal” Beanpot post-pandemic and making it something special for the fans.

“We won the hockey game,” head coach Albie O’Connell said after the victory. “I’m excited for the fans. I’m excited for the band who was banging hard up there tonight. So I’m happy for the guys.”

The 2021-22 Terrier roster featured three seniors in cCaptain Logan Cockerill, aAssistant cCaptain Ty Amonte, and transfer Joseph Campolieto, as well as one graduate student in with Aassistant cCaptain Max Kaufman. Cockerill and Amonte were on the 2017-2018 Terrier squad that won the Hockey East Championship, but other than that, the two haven’t seen much hardware and winning the Beanpot was a representation of four years of hard work.

“They deserve it more than anybody,” junior forward and Beanpot MVP Dylan Peterson remarked of his captains. “They’ve been great [at] leading by example and the rest was kind of following in their footsteps… I’m happy for those guys.”

With a midseason tournament at the Desert Hockey Classic in early January and the Beanpot five weeks later, the 101st season of Terrier Hockey will be key as the team looks to reinstate itself as the powerhouse at the yearly “BU invitational”.

As 2022 captain Domenick Fensore put it, “[You’ve] gotta watch out for those Terriers this year, that’s all I’ve got to say.”