Harvard Hopes to Move Past Mixed Season Performance at Return to 72nd Annual Beanpot

In 2022, the Harvard men’s ice hockey team fell to the eventual Beanpot champion Boston University Terriers by a single goal. Now, a team that has been struggling with consistent results and losing close games has a chance at redemption in front of the largest crowd of the year.

Harvard (7-10-2, 6-6-2 ECAC) will open play for the 72nd annual Men’s Beanpot Monday at TD Garden in its semi-final game against BU (13-9-1, Hockey East).

The Beanpot, a tournament played between the four major college hockey teams in Boston University, Boston College, Harvard, and Northeastern, began in the 1952-53 season, and, since 1996, has been held at Boston’s TD Garden in front of crowds as large as 19,600 people.

Northeastern is the tournament’s most recent winner, having defeated BU 4-3 in overtime in 2024, while Harvard continues to search for its first win since 2017.

Speaking after the team’s 3-1 victory against the Yale Bulldogs, senior captain and defenseman Ian Moore reflected on its next matchup against Boston College and the Beanpot tournament soon approaching.

“It is always a super fun game when you can play any of these Boston schools,” Moore said. “There will definitely be a lot of emotions in that game.”

“And we definitely [have] to stick to our game plan, stick to our identity, not stray away from it,” he added. “Play hard defense, be physical, make simple plays, and work as a cohesive unit.”

Ahead of the Beanpot, Harvard is slated for a Friday contest at home against the Princeton Tigers.

The Crimson currently sit at 7-10-2 overall and 6-6-2 in ECAC play, having won 4 of its last 7 games.

Harvard won its only other matchup against the Tigers, a 4-3 OT victory in Princeton, NJ.

However, the team’s most recent win came against the fierce Colgate Raiders.

The Raiders hold multiple victories against previously ranked #17 Dartmouth. Colgate also has wins over former #12 Cornell, and #18 Quinnipiac.

The tally in Harvard’s win column marks its 7th of the season, tying its win total from the 2023-24 season with still 10 games to play in the regular season including the Beanpot.

Yet in the two months since the Crimson returned from the Friendship Four tournament in Belfast, Northern Ireland, it has struggled to string together wins against a mix of conference and Ivy League competitors, including a potential Beanpot foe in Boston College.

After defeating Yale on Cleary night at Bright-Landry, Harvard took to the road for its game against the Eagles on Jan. 14 before making its way up to New York for games against Union, Cornell, and Colgate.

Junior forward Casey Severo, also speaking after the win, believed that moving forward against strong ECAC and out-of-conference opponents would require stronger team effort, even off the ice.

“We kind of had a slow start before break,” Severo said, “and we’ve come back and taken it upon ourselves in the room to build our identity.”

The team hopes that the Beanpot will serve as an opportunity to showcase all its new changes and development.

Much of the slog now, including the poorer performance last season, is mostly seen as attributable to Harvard’s need to start from scratch after its top 5 scorers from 2022-23 left for the NHL.

Additionally, while Harvard boasts a strong freshman class in Justin Solovey, Lucas St. Louis, Mick Thompson, Ben Charette, and others, starting games on time and closing out in the final minutes have certainly been one of the team’s major difficulties thus far.

At times this has resulted in taking untimely penalties in an effort to play more aggressive in late-game comeback attempts.

Six of the Crimson’s games before the start of the new year were decided by a single goal, with Harvard losing four of them.

Harvard ranks 3rd to last on the power kill in the ECAC, but several spots higher in goals allowed with 12, tied with Cornell.

This certainly had an impact on those six games and even some after the break.

On the season as a whole, Harvard has struggled mightily at home, with just a 2-5-2 record compared to an even 4-4-0 on the road.

Perhaps a return to road and neutral site competition before returning home on Feb. 21 to play host to Union College can elevate the team’s play in the most anticipated tournament of the year.

— Staff writer Nate M. Bolan can be reached at nathan.bolan@thecrimson.com