BOSTON – Skating up and down the TD Garden ice on Tuesday night might have felt like the ultimate moment for the women of the four Beanpot schools – Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and Northeastern – but by the time that the two games ended and Northeastern won the Beanpot title on a dramatic overtime goal by Skylar Irving, all of the players and coaches realized that what they had just done meant so much more than just the hockey games played on the ice.
“I think it’s truly amazing being here at the Garden, it’s historic,” said Irving. “[Scoring the game-winning goal] is something that I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.”
The crowd – an impressive 10,633 that came to TD Garden to watch the first women’s Beanpot tournament final ever played in the NHL building – was a little bit different than your typical hockey atmosphere.
Cheers and boos were replaced by shrieks, those that any parent of a young girl would recognize.
The TD Garden seats, while boasting plenty of students from the four schools in attendance, were in essence overrun by girls’ youth hockey teams, most clad in their club’s sweaters.
A break up the ice – loud shriek. A great save – loud shriek. For a goal – add 20 decibels to that shriek. The OT game-winner – an absolute explosion.
The players may have woken up thinking they were making history playing the Women’s Beanpot at the TD Garden for the first time in the event’s 45-year history, it didn’t take long to figure out that the game was as much about the future of women’s hockey as the present.
“What an incredible atmosphere,” said Boston College coach Katie King-Crowley, whose team finished fourth in the event, losing twice in a shootout after battling to two ties, still seemed in awe postgame.
King-Crowley knows great atmospheres. She’s won Olympic gold. She’s coached in the Frozen Four. And she, herself, is a member of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
She’s also a mother to a 10-year-old female hockey player. She understood that as important as the game was for her players as they drive towards the end of the regular season, Tuesday night at TD Garden was equally as important to the aspiring talent in the seats.
“The amount of teams of little girls who get to experience a game like this in this building, it’s so special,” King-Crowley said. “It certainly makes it all so exciting for the future of women’s hockey.”
In 1978, five years after the advent of Title IX, the women’s coaches of the four schools all got together in a small bar in Cambridge better known for birthing rock bands than hockey tournaments and decided to take the chance and form the Women’s Beanpot as a companion event to the men’s event that was formed in 1952 as a way to fill open dates in the doldrums of winter at the old Boston Arena.
The idea of the Women’s Beanpot was ambitious. At the time, only one of the four programs – Northeastern – was varsity with one more (Harvard) in the process of transitioning to varsity. BC and BU were 20 years away from making that move.
Former Hockey East commissioner Joe Bertanga, who had played in the Beanpot with Harvard’s men’s team and was coach for the Harvard women, understood the importance of having a trophy to award to the annual champion. Thus, he scoured antique stores for a Beanpot, ultimately finding a porcelain version that was painted shades of brown.
That first “trophy” cost $6 and was the tournament award for a number of years starting with the first in 1979. A wood base was added before there was a decision to replace it with the metal Beanpot trophy used today. The original Women’s Beanpot trophy is located in the New England Sports Museum.
According to Bertagna, there has been a strong push to bring the women’s event to the same stage as the men, inside of an NHL building. Tuesday’s massive crowd – one of the largest to ever watch a women’s hockey game – is one that the organizers hope can be repeated.
And when they do – next year and for generations forward – you can believe that every women who dons their university’s sweater on the TD Garden ice will be playing for the name on the front as well as for every little girl watching.
“All these little girls, they’re all going to want to play here,” said King. “To play in this atmosphere.”
