Northeastern beats BC 4-2 for 2nd straight Beanpot title

BOSTON — Lincoln Griffin had a goal and two assists, Cayden Primeau stopped 33 shots and Northeastern beat Boston College 4-2 on Monday night to win consecutive Beanpot titles for the first time in 34 years.

Patrick Schule and Austin Plevy also scored to help No. 14 Northeastern (17-9-1) open a 3-0 lead before the Eagles made it a one-goal game in the third period. Zach Solow added an empty-netter with six seconds left as the Huskies claimed Boston's college hockey bragging rights for just the sixth time in the 67-year history of the tournament.

David Cotton and J.D. Dudek scored for BC, and Joseph Woll made 31 saves for the Eagles (10-14-3).

Harvard beat Boston University earlier Monday night in the consolation game.

First played in 1952, the tournament pits the area's four college hockey powers against each other on the first two Mondays in February.

Northeastern has long seemed like an unwanted guest.

The five Beanpot titles the Huskies previously brought home to Huntington Avenue were less than half of the next-worst haul, Harvard's 11. Boston University won 29 of the first 57, an occurrence so common that the event was jokingly called the BU Invitational.

But Northeastern has now won two in a row, something it hadn't done since 1984-85, when the tournament was still at the old Boston Garden and current coach Jim Madigan was a Huskies forward. Northeastern fans watched that building close and a new one open and needed three decades before ending their drought last year.

But this team and its boisterous fans outplayed and outshouted BC and BU, the Commonwealth Avenue neighbors with trophy cases full of NCAA championships and Beanpot crowns.

Primeau was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player, while also claiming honors as the top goaltender for the second straight year.

The game was scoreless until the last minute of the first period, when Plevy poked in the rebound of Griffin's wraparound. Schule made it 2-0 late in the second, and then Griffin flipped a backhand into the net 85 seconds into the third.

That seemed to spark the Eagles, who cut the deficit to two on Cotton's goal three minutes later and then made it a 3-2 game with 7:46 to play. BC outshot Northeastern 15-9 in the third, but Primeau turned away the rest of them to protect the lead and then Solow clinched the victory for Northeastern.

Associated Press