Dog Pot Rematch at the Garden (Women's Beanpot Championship Preview)
After two very different semifinals, it will be a Garden rematch with BU taking on Northeastern in the 2025 Women's Beanpot Championship game
The 2025 Women’s Beanpot Championship will see the Boston University Terriers and Northeastern Huskies face off for the second year in a row at TD Garden, with both teams winning their respective semifinals.
Arena Wrap-up
Before we preview the Garden matchups, let’s take a look back at the final Beanpot games at the ancestral home of the Beanpot, Matthews Arena.
Semifinal 1: BU 2 Harvard 1 (OT)
Game one of the 2025 Beanpot was a tight one, with neither team finding the back of the net till the third period. Less than 2 minutes into the third, Crimson sophomore Angelica Megdanis scored her first career goal to give Harvard the lead. The shot was Harvard just 6th of the game, having been held to 4 in the first and 1 in the second. On the other end of the ice, Harvard goalie, Ainsley Tuffy, stopped all 35 of BU’s first 35 shots in the game. It wasn’t until 19:05 in the third period that BU was finally able to get one past Tuffy. With goalie Callie Shanahan pulled, Sydney Healey was able to finally break the drought, her team-leading 9th goal of the season and 3rd career Beanpot goal, tieing the game and sending it to overtime. Healey's goal broke a 382:58 goal drought for BU at Matthews Arena, with the Terriers' last goal coming at 16:07 in the second period of the 2022 Beanpot against Harvard.
In Overtime, the Terriers, again, controlled the game with shots 4-1 to start the period, again, Tuffy held strong for the Crimson until Providence transfer Lindsay Bochna sent the Terriers to their second straight Beanpot Championship game at TD Garden.
The win was the first over the Crimson at Matthews Arena since the first Women’s Beanpot consolation game in 1979. It was also the Terriers first semifinal win at Matthews since the 1981 Women’s Beanpot.
Semifinal 2: Northeastern 4 BC 2
In front of 3,298 fans, the largest crowd for a Women’s Beanpot campus site game and largest Women’s Hockey crowd in Matthews Arena history, the Northeastern Huskies dominated the Boston College Eagles from the drop of the puck.
Within the span of a minute in the first period, the Huskies went up 2-0 over the Eagles, with goals from Morgan Jackson and Beanpot active goal leader, Taze Thompson her 5th career Beanpot goal. Within 3 minutes of that, the Huskies went up 3-0 with Tory Mariano’s first goal of the season. Hockey East points leader, Sammy Taber got one back for the Eagles, in the waning seconds of the first.
In the second, Lily Shannon restored the Huskies’ 3 goal lead with her first career short-handed goal.
The third period saw the Eagles try to assert pressure on the Huskies. 19 of the Eagles’ 39 shots were taken in the third. They were not able to muster the offense they needed, with active Women’s Beanpot point leader only able to take one back 18:49 of the period on the power play. The Huskies held on for the win to reach their 31st Women’s Beanpot Championship game. The win was the first semifinal win for Northeastern over BC since 2012 and first over BC at Matthews since 1994.
Garden Bean Party
For the second consecutive year, BU will face off with Northeastern on TD Garden ice with the Women’s Beanpot on the line.
Consolation Game (4:30 pm): BC vs. Harvard
Boston College and Harvard will face off in the opener at TD Garden for the second year in a row. Last time resulted in a Harvard shootout win after the two skated to a 2-2 tie in regulation. In that game, Sammy Taber scored a late extra attacker goal to even things up with less than two minutes to go.
BC (15-7-1, HEA (1st): 12-4-1) comes into the game off of a shutout of Vermont. Olivia Maffeo and Alanna Devlin each scored their 3rd of the season, with Maffeo also recorded an assist in the game. Hockey East joint leading goalscorer (12), Julia Pellerin scored a short-handed goal in the waning seconds of the game to cap off the 3-0 shutout. The shutout was Grace Campbell’s 3rd in four games.
Harvard (2-15-2, ECAC (12th): 1-12-1) comes in off an 2-3 OT loss to Union. In a back and forth game, Harvard took an early lead midway through the first with a power play goal by Ellie Bayard. Union scored two in the first to take a 2-1 lead into the break. The Garnet Chargers kept the lead until Crimson Emily Hamann scored her first of the season to send things to overtime with less than four minutes to go in the 3rd. Union got the game winner two minutes into the overtime period.
This will be the first time Harvard and BC both lost in a semifinal at Matthews Arena. BC has won 3 of the 4 meetings between the Eagles and Crimson in the Beanpot Consolation game, but Harvard got the shootout win last time out at the Garden.
Championship Game (7:30 pm): BU vs. Northeastern
The Grandmommy of Them All, the oldest active women’s collegiate hockey tournament, the Women’s Beanpot will crown its 46th Champion on Tuesday night at TD Garden. Northeastern is looking for its 20th and 3rd in a row, Boston University is look for its 3rd.
Modern Beanpot rivals, BU and Northeastern, have faced off 7 times with a Beanpot on the line—men’s (4) and women’s (3)—since 2018. The most of any combination of teams in that span.
Northeastern (14-8-1, HEA (4th): 10-6-1) enters the Championship Game on a two game losing streak, having been swept by Providence (1-5, 2-3). Captain Taze Thompson helped the Huskies avoid a shutout with an extra attacker power play goal with less than 3 minutes to go in the third on Friday. On Saturday, again, the Huskies gave up an early goal to the Friars in the first. Allie Lalonde scored her first of the season to tie things up in the first minute of the second, but, again, the Friars took back the lead with two more in the second. Jules Constantinople brought the Huskies within 1 with a goal 4:20 into the third, but Northeastern could not muster any more goals.
The Terriers (14-7-1, HEA (3rd): 11-4-1) also enter the Championship Game on a loss, unable to get anything past New Hampshire’s Sedona Blair, who pitched a 26 save shutout. Callie Shanahan kept BU in the game as best she could, saving 22 of 24 UNH shots. The Terriers dominated shots in the first (10-8) and third (10-3) but UNH was able to score in both periods.
It’s an oddity for both teams to come into the Women’s Beanpot Championship game on a loss, since all four teams went varsity (i.e., BU became the last of the four to go full DI) in 2005, it has never happened. In that span, there have been four instances—2007, 2011, 2014, 2018—when the eventual Beanpot Champion came into the game on a loss, all four were Boston College. The last time two teams came into the Women’s Beanpot on a loss was 2001, where Harvard prevailed over Northeastern 4-3 in overtime at Conte Forum.
Terrier Head Coach Tara Watchorn is the first coach to play in and coach their alma mater in a Women’s Beanpot Final. Current Harvard Head Coach Laura Bellamy won a Women’s Beanpot in 2010 as a player at Harvard, but has yet to make a final as a Head Coach. Former Huskies Head Coach Laura Schuler won 2 Beanpots as a player at Northeastern, but never made a final in her four years behind the bench (2004-2008).
The two teams split their first two games this season, with each team earning a 4-0 home shutout in back to back nights in October. It is just the second time in varsity program history that they each shut the other out in the same season and first since 2008-09—in that instance they each shut the other out on the road.
When the final buzzer sounds on Tuesday night, it’ll be either Tamara Giaquinto or Taze Thompson lifting the Women’s Beanpot on TD Garden ice as the Dog Pound or the Dog House watch on as their team’s name rises to the hallowed heights of the Garden rafters affixed to the Women’s Beanpot banner as the sounds of Go BU or All Hail, Northeastern ring out through the Garden and into the cold Boston night.
More on the Women’s Beanpot
If you’re still looking for more on the Beanpot, BU alumna and former BU Men’s and Women’s Hockey (current Hockey East on NESN) Rinkside Reporter Laura Stickells discussed the semifinals and preview the championship on the NESN Respect Her Game podcast she hosts with BC lacrosse alumna Annabelle Hasselbeck. Laura will also be rink side on Tuesday night, reporting on action at the Garden for the NESN broadcast, along with a female-led production team and an all-female broadcast team.