A historic Beanpot finale is on tap for Monday night at TD Garden.
For the first time in the tournament’s 70-year history, Northeastern and Harvard will play the late game on Monday, battling for college hockey bragging rights in Boston.
The two teams already met in a wildly offensive, back-and-forth New Year’s Day game in Cambridge, with the Crimson earning an 8-4 win. Two of Harvard’s three losses since were against a Quinnipiac team that is highly regarded in the national polls.
That game has served as a turning point for Northeastern. The Huskies have since gone 6-1-1 to move within one point of Boston University — the team that they beat in last Monday’s semifinal round — for first place in the Hockey East standings.
Below is a look at who and what to watch for each team in Monday’s championship game.
Commonwealth Avenue rivals Boston College and Boston University will meet in the consolation game at 4:30 p.m.
Northeastern (14-10-4, 11-5-3 HEA)
Leading scorer: Aidan McDonough
The Huskies’ captain from Milton, Mass., has always had a knack for scoring big goals, and it has been no different lately in helping his team turn around a midseason slump. McDonough has scored eight of his Hockey East-leading 19 goals over the last nine games, tallying on the power play during a three-goal Friday comeback to tie Providence before netting the shootout winner. His eight man-up goals also pace the conference and have lifted his career total in that department to 29, the most among all active players. The Thayer product has already topped his shot total from last year, averaging a tick over four per game. In five career Beanpot games, he has two goals and three assists.
Top center: Justin Hryckowian
Hryckowian has been a stalwart in the middle of one of the Huskies’ top lines since he first set foot on Huntington Avenue. While his offensive pace has picked up to the level of scoring 13 goals and 30 points in 28 games, he has always been an elite faceoff specialist, winning 59.2 percent and more in total (393) than any player in the country this season. His two-way responsibility is also indicated in a plus-20 rating that ties for tops in Hockey East. In the scoring area, the former Salisbury star has put together three multi-goal games including a hat trick, while contributing three game-winning and two power-play goals. Last Monday, Hryckowian set up freshman defenseman Hunter McDonald’s clinching empty-netter.
Top freshman: Cam Lund
McDonald, fellow defenseman Vinny Borgesi and forward Jack Williams (Biddeford, Maine) have all been steady players, but Lund (Bridgewater, Mass.) has lived up to being the most highly touted of the Huskies’ newcomers. Three of Lund’s five goals came during a hat-trick performance against BC in November, so his skill has mostly come through in playmaking ability as his 14 assists are fourth on the team and in the top five among league freshmen. On the defensive side, McDonald has 11 points and ranks second nationally with 73 blocked shots.
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Top defenseman: Jayden Struble
Especially after last season’s senior captain Jordan Harris (Haverhill, Mass.) graduated to the Montreal Canadiens, the hard-hitting Struble (Cumberland, R.I.) has taken on top-pair minutes in coach Jerry Keefe’s lineup as a senior. Though his lone goal this season came in October, Struble has been a great facilitator in recent games, piling up six of his nine total assists within the last nine games. He drove up the right side to set up sophomore Matt Choupani’s game-tying goal Friday against Providence. If he continues his recent pace, a productive Monday night could help Struble pass his previous career-high point mark of 14 set last season.
Goaltender: Devon Levi
Levi’s numbers may not be exactly up to the level of his Mike Richter Award-winning debut season (1.54 GAA, .952 save percentage), but he still boasts 14 wins and saves the puck at a league-leading .930 clip to remain among the upper echelon of goaltenders in Hockey East and nationally. After suiting up for Team Canada at the Beijing Olympics last February, the Quebec native brought plenty of big-game experience into his first taste of the Beanpot and stopped 33 of the 34 shots against defending champ Boston University. He made 54 stops Friday at Providence, the second-highest game total of his career.
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One lasting note: In the first-ever Northeastern-Harvard final, the Huskies will be looking to continue their most dominant run of Beanpot history and win their fourth title in a span of five tournaments, which was only interrupted last year by BU. A stretch of titles in five years (1984, 1985, 1988) followed the program’s inaugural title in 1980.
Harvard (17-6-1, 14-4-0 ECAC)
Leading scorer: Sean Farrell
Leading the way for an offense that scores 3.7 goals per game is the Hopkinton, Mass., native who had two goals and recorded a career-high five points in Friday’s 6-3 win at ECAC and Ivy League rival Dartmouth. Farrell has 41 points in 24 games on the season, but 22 of them have come in the last 12 games for the dangerous, speedy winger. He has recorded multiple points in six of the last eight games to become Harvard’s third 40-plus-point scorer in five seasons. The sophomore is tied for second in the country with 27 helpers, already nine more than his rookie year, putting him even with the likes of Boston University freshman defenseman Lane Hutson and two off the national lead.
Top defenseman: Henry Thrun
While fellow captain John Farinacci has nine points in nine games since returning from an earlier injury, Thrun (Southborough, Mass.) left the Beanpot semifinal due to an upper-body ailment and did not play Friday. The former St. Mark’s star is a plus-13 player and has been another point-per-game contributor all season, including posting two goals and three assists in a huge ECAC sweep against Colgate and Cornell to end January. With two freshmen and three sophomores playing regularly on the back end, Thrun provides a key veteran presence that would be sorely missed in a championship atmosphere.
Top center: Matthew Coronato
The sophomore center was key in the first Beanpot victory, scoring two one-time goals on the power play to run his team-leading total to 16 and set the table for freshman Marek Hejduk's last-second overtime heroics that stunned Boston College’s impressive third-period comeback. Coronato has logged three different two-goal efforts since the calendar turned to 2023 and has also matched linemate Farrell with four game-winning goals, two of which have come in overtime against Cornell and Yale. His five man-up goals this season tie for the team lead with Alex Laferriere, who had two goals and two assists when the Huskies visited Bright-Landry Hockey Center last month.
Top freshman: Joe Miller
The Minneapolis native and Toronto Maple Leafs prospect has fit right in on the top line alongside the two aforementioned forwards. A small winger at just 5-foot-8 and 147 pounds, Miller has shown off a lethal scorer’s touch by hitting the 20-point mark with 12 goals in his 24 games this season. Miller put up seven goals within a six-game span to begin 2023, but he went five consecutive games without a tally before scoring during Friday’s third period at Dartmouth. Those more recent numbers — seven goals, 12 points and a plus-12 rating in nine games — earned ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Month honors for January. Miller is one of the nation-leading 15 NHL-drafted prospects on the Crimson roster.
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Goaltender: Mitchell Gibson
Gibson is by far the most experienced of the Crimson’s three goaltenders, though the other two both have seen action as the senior missed time with a minor injury in December. He sports a .918 save percentage — identical to his mark for last season’s ECAC Hockey championship team — to go along with his 11-5-1 record. The Pennsylvania native put together a career night in the Beanpot semifinal, making 45 saves while holding off BC’s surge to help the Crimson advance for the first time since 2017. The aforementioned meeting with Northeastern was the last time that Gibson allowed more than three goals in a game.
One lasting note: Harvard has been an incredible third-period team all season, holding a 34-17 scoring advantage over its opponents during the final frame. The Crimson has won eight times when trailing or tied entering the third, including last Monday when BC’s two-goal, 22-shot third period sent the game to overtime. Northeastern had to come back from a 3-0 deficit in its Friday game, but that won’t be a sustainable trend against a team like Harvard.
