SIDEBAR: Outcome May Indicate Change in Boston Hockey Balance of Power

The Eagles have landed and the Crimson is seeing red.

Boston College surged past Harvard 2-0 in last night’s championship game of the 28th Women’s Beanpot tournament and in winning perhaps signaled the onset of a landmark shift in the balance of hockey power in Boston.

With the decisive shutout victory, the Eagles claimed their first-ever Beanpot title, while the Crimson’s bid for a record-tying eighth straight trophy came up emphatically short. Not only that, but Harvard relinquished intra-city bragging rights on its own home ice at the Bright Center, a fact that was not lost on Crimson coach Katey Stone or her players.

“It’s pretty disappointing,” Stone conceded. “There’s nothing you can say to the kids in the locker room. You shouldn’t have somebody take the Beanpot away from you in your own rink. It’s something that we’ve owned for seven years and we just let it go.”

The recent history between the two squads provided little indication that such a transformation was imminent. Harvard had won its previous 17 contests against BC, with its last loss against the crosstown opponent dating back to the 1996-97 season. Three of those conquests came in the last four Beanpot finals, with the Crimson taking those meetings by a combined score of 20-3.

However, this season has differed dramatically from years past, as the two teams seem to be moving in opposite direction. Harvard, for the past half-decade an unquestioned elite program and Frozen Four mainstay, has struggled mightily with its offensive consistency and slipped to fifth place in the ECAC.

The Eagles, conversely, integrating just their second scholarship class into the fold this winter, have soared to runner-up position in an improving Hockey East conference.

After 88 consecutive weeks in the national rankings, the precariously-placed No. 10 Crimson is now in danger of slipping out of the polls with last night’s defeat. Boston College, on the other hand, could sneak into that tenth spot if it captures a weekend series against Providence.

To be fair, this season, coinciding with the Olympics and therefore offering exceptional parity, belies the true power structure of the country’s top teams. The Crimson acutely feels the loss of its three top players—Julie Chu, Sarah Vaillancourt, and Caitlin Cahow—for the year to participate in the Winter Games currently going on in Turin, Italy. Add a trio of world-caliber skaters back to Harvard’s roster and suddenly the landscape doesn’t look quite so level.

That being said, the talent gulf seems to be shrinking, as a tale of two sophomores last night might indicate. On the Eagles’ second goal, second-year player and tournament MVP Deborah Spillane juked and turned around Crimson sophomore defender Jessica Mackenzie before breaking in on net for the score. BC matched Harvard in quickness and stick-handling throughout the contest.

“We do have some team speed now,” Eagles coach Tom Mutch said. “It’s starting to come and with the classes that will come here, we’ll have some real team speed.”

In the evening’s early game, as further fodder for subscribers to the notion of newfound neutrality, Boston University, a first-year varsity program, dominated Northeastern, the all-time leader in female Beanpot crowns with 14, in a 3-1 win.

That result came on the heels of last Tuesday’s semifinals, in which the upstart Terriers and the struggling Huskies to pushed Harvard and BC, respectively, to overtime before falling.

The parallels to the men’s Beanpot, where Boston College and Boston University have traditionally ruled an always competitive foursome, are hard to ignore, but Stone purports to be only pleased with the growing homogeneity among the quartet.

“It’s great for women’s hockey and certainly hockey in Boston,” Stone said. “Four really good schools; that’s what we wanted all along. Believe me, I would much rather play BC in a tight game than blow somebody out and win a championship. It ends up having that flair and mystique of the Men’s Beanpot. So I hope all the Beanpots from here on in are tight one-goal games or go to overtime.”

With the advancing parity in women’s hockey in Beantow, Stone can only hope some of those nail-biters go the Crimson’s way.

—Staff writer Jonathan Lehman can be reached at jlehman@fas.harvard.edu.