Expect the best team to win the Beanpot

Two truisms about the Beanpot have pretty much been thrown out the window in the past decade:

1. Throw out the records in a two-week, single-elimination tournament; and
2. BU will usually win.

Boston College has reversed BU’s stranglehold on the tournament, and carries in to tonight’s matchup a remarkable 10 year streak in which they have not lost to the Terriers in Beanpot play.

With three teams heading in to tonight’s first round of the Beanpot ranked in the top 7, the battle for Boston supremacy takes on added national significance. Adding to that significance: in every one of the last 9 Beanpot tournaments, the team that won went on to be the team that went the furthest in the NCAA tournament.

2008 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and the national title.
2009 -> Boston University won the Beanpot and national title
2010 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and the national title
2011 -> Boston College won the Beanpot, won the Hockey East title, and was the only Beanpot school to qualify for the NCAA tournament
2012 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and the national title
2013 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and was the only Beanpot school to qualify for the NCAA tournament
2014 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and advanced to the Frozen Four
2015 -> Boston University won the Beanpot and advanced to the national championship game, nearly winning the national title before this happened:

2016 -> Boston College won the Beanpot and advanced to the Frozen Four

Every BC team that has advanced to the Frozen Four since 2008 has won the Beanpot, as has every BU team. (For that matter, so has every Northeastern and Harvard team, but yeah.) In fact, no Beanpot-losing team has gone so far as the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament since 2006.

The only Beanpot winner to not either win its conference title or advance to the Frozen Four during this stretch was the 2013 BC team.

What does this all mean? Possibly very little; most of us can remember BU winning the Beanpot almost every year between ‘98 and ‘07 even when BC usually had the “better” team.

But in recent years, the “best” team usually wins the Beanpot. Conventional wisdom would suggest that would be BU this year. That said, should BU get knocked off on one of the next two Mondays, maybe the conventional wisdom won’t prove to be right when March rolls along. If recent Beanpots are any guide, the team that skates away with the trophy will prove to truly be the best in town when all is said and done.