It's Only a Game

When the Harvard men's hockey team took the ice for the 1983 Beanpot consolation game, the Crimson squad that had fallen to Boston College a week earlier was nowhere in sight.

The Harvard lineup on that second Monday in February included 10 varsity players, who put up a good fight in a 5-4 loss to Boston University that relegated the Cantabs to last for the second consecutive Beanpot.

"It was kind of a farce," says Northeastern Coach Fern Flaman.

The Beanpot games haven't counted in ECAC standings since the early 1970s and coaches whose teams land in the consolation round often save their first-string players for upcoming games that do count, eliminating the possibility of fatigue and injury.

"I think the thing is predicated on giving the kids a chance to play," says George Whitelaw of the ECAC, "but now it sort of boomerangs, and they might want the rest more."

In Harvard's case last year, Crimson Coach Bill Cleary says, his squad already had a few injured players, and was facing a particularly tough schedule.

"The guys were hurt and we were going to play four games in five days or something like that--we were number two in the East and we didn't want to risk it," he explains.

But coaches and tournament organizers dismiss the possibility that the consolation game will be eliminated from the tournament altogether. "It's more or less a necessary evil," says Joe Perlmutter, assistant director of events at the Boston Garden.

Perlmutter adds, "It [eliminating the consolation round] always seems to come up every year. The persons that always seem to bring it up are the coaches whose teams have to play in it. We at the Garden, as far as I know, have never seriously considered scrapping it."

Calling it "a question that everybody has been batting back and forth for years," Cleary speculates that the consolation round might be taken more seriously if it counted for something. "I would not be for dropping it," he adds.

Flaman isn't counting on having to worry about it at all this year. "I'm not anticipating playing in the consolation game--all we want to do is get there and hopefully get into the final."