The 43rd Women’s Beanpot Championship, Boston College vs. #6 Harvard: Final Thoughts & Prediction

After a season of ups and downs, Boston College Women’s Hockey rides into Tuesday’s Beanpot Championship on its longest winning streak of the season — seven games — and you definitely feel like the Eagles have gotten hot at the right time. But if Coach Crowley’s squad is going to bring home the first BC Hockey trophy (either men’s or women’s) in four years, it won’t be easy.

After taking down then-#3 Northeastern in the Beanpot semifinals, BC’s reward is #6 Harvard. What’s crazy is that the Crimson are actually ranked above Northeastern right now in both KRACH and the Pairwise... So if the Eagles can win the Beanpot, they’ll certainly have earned it.

WHO

Boston College Eagles (17-11-0, 14-8-0 WHEA [4th])
vs. No. 6 Harvard Crimson (17-6-0, 13-4-0 ECAC [1st])

WHAT

The 43rd Women’s Beanpot Championship

WHERE

Matthews Arena
Boston, MA

WHEN

Tuesday, February 8th, 2022
7:30pm EST

HOW TO WATCH

The game will be shown live on NESNplus. As always, those outside the NESN coverage area can stream the game for free at CollegeSportsLive.com. Here is a direct link to that stream.

LAST TIME OUT

Boston College swept their two-game weekend with a couple really solid league wins over New Hampshire and Boston University. The Eagles led by three goals at one point in both games, with the final scores ending up 5-3 and 3-0. Saturday’s win over the Terriers was BC’s first shutout win of the season.

Harvard’s weekend was... fine. The Crimson took a seven game winning streak into Friday’s game against #8 Colgate but were pretty handily beaten by a score of 6-2. They rebounded for a 6-3 win over Cornell on Saturday, but you have to think Harvard might have had a chance to be ranked above Northeastern had the not dropped Friday’s game.

PROJECTIONS

KRACH (used for odds) has the Eagles ranked 16th and Harvard in 6th. Running the numbers gives us the Eagles with an 25.78% chance of winning, or BC +288 with your local bookie.

The GRaNT rankings (used for point spread) are about the same, with the Eagles in 16th as well and the Crimson in 8th. Our calculator gives us a projected score of 3.53 to 1.73 in favor of Harvard, or something like a 4-2 Crimson win.

THIS WEEK’S STORYLINE

Don’t Fall Flat. BC could honestly be forgiven if they came out, put up a good fight, and didn’t finish the job. Harvard has been one of the country’s hottest teams in the country of late and at this point they’re ranked about where Northeastern is, and the Huskies had dominated the Eagles up until last week’s Beanpot semifinal. But BC’s only other tournament experience this year coincided with the season’s low point, when the Eagles got destroyed by #8 Colgate and unranked Mercyhurst in the Smashville Showcase. You’d like to think Boston College will do better this time around.

None of this is to say BC should be happy just to be in the final — on the contrary, with the turnaround Coach Crowley has engineered thus far, putting up a similar effort as they have been over the last few weeks should be enough for BC to make it happen.

GAME TIME MEAL OF THE WEEK

Chicken Quesadillas

Taco Tuesday is the obvious choice, but we did that last week, so we’ll change things up slightly while keeping the same theme. Quesadillas are absurdly easy to make at home, especially if you want to just go the lazy route and use those cans of chicken. Look, it’s the middle of the week and you’re busy. Don’t feel bad about it.

My latest quesadilla routine is to fry up some chicken in a skillet with onions and peppers and then mix in the shredded cheddar as well as some queso sauce (!) all together in a mixing bowl before spreading it on the tortillas and warming up both sides. Phenomenal. It ends up being like a sort of quesadilla crunch wrap. Highly recommended.

GAME TIME SONG OF THE WEEK

Franz Ferdinand — The Dark Of The Matinée

You’ll find me in the matinee, the dark of the matinée
It’s better in the matinée, the dark of the matinée is mine
Yes it’s mine

The only reason it’s better in the matinée is because there’s no stress, since you’ve already lost. Honestly, putting on the early game to watch #4 Northeastern lay a beatdown on the Terriers at 4:30pm will probably be worth your time. That game is on NESNplus too.

PREDICTION

Harvard’s games are pretty high scoring, so I hope the Eagles are ready for a shootout. But the Crimson also give up plenty of goals — almost as many as BC does, which is surprising for such a highly-ranked team and not Harvard’s usual M.O. — so this might be a little something different. I’m interested in seeing how the Eagles play against a team that’s essentially the polar opposite of Northeastern but ranked about as highly.

I’m going the blind optimism route and will say Boston College will win the Beanpot 4-3 in 3-on-3 OT. Bring it home, Eagles!