The Beanpot. The Tradition. The Return.

Located along the Mystic River along Boston's outer northern reaches, old Everett Station spent decades linking generations of North Shore natives with their local capital city. Its temporary-turned-permanent was like so many other pieces of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's infrastructure because it was never adequately replaced after it opened, though its service to the Commonwealth and the greater city region provided services because neighboring Malden, the expected replacement for the station, refused to allow streetcar access to its city's roadways.

Its status remained intact until its destruction created the Encore resort now towering over the waterway, but on January 12, 1954, Everett Station had a front-and-center headline to the nightly edition of The Boston Globe after an MTA vehicle and a trailer truck collided near the Revere Beach Parkway in the early morning hours.

The weather didn't help, but the 11 inches of fluffy snow and 10-degrees of cold weather sent countless locals onto their walking feet as they shuffled towards Everett Station. By nightfall, the region itself was in a deep freeze that allowed its locals to await the results of the first-ever Bean Pot tournament contested at North Station's Boston Garden, won by Boston College in a tighter-than-ended, 4-1 game against Harvard.

"Pressed to the limit until the final five minutes," wrote Bob Holbrook atop The Boston Daily Globe's sports page, "Boston College scored twice in the waning moments to defeat Harvard, 4-1, and win the annual Bean Pot Tournament before 2,399 at the Garden last night…The Eagles - notching their 10th win against one loss - dethroned Harvard which captured the title in the inaugural a year ago."

Held 13 months after the first tournament's Christmastime placement in 1952, the Bean Pot represented dream matchups for local college hockey fans clamoring for these types of games. For years, the New England Invitational Hockey Tournament brought teams together but failed to pit the four biggest Boston programs against one another. The 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. start times in the aftermath of a Christmas holiday added to the flair of playing at the Boston Arena, but the true draw involved bringing the four most powerful teams from a region noted for its Stanley Cup, Original Six roots.

Boston University, for example, opened its 1952-1953 campaign by beating Brown and throttling Tufts before drawing Harvard in a game held at Boston Arena. A 4-1 loss to Yale preceded the first Bean Pot game against Northeastern, after which a 4-1 win established a rematch against Cooney Weiland's high-powered Crimson, who themselves entered the Beanpot with an 8-1 win over Tufts after the tie against BU.

BC owned its own measure of respect by beating Yale in nearby Lynn, Massachusetts, but a 6-4 loss to Brown sent the Eagles into the Beanpot with a split in their first two games. Combined with Northeastern, the four teams owned some of the largest reputations and most loyal neighborhood fanbases in the region.

"What makes it especially auspicious is the staging of the tournament at a time when the four teams appear to be so well matched," wrote The Boston Globe in 1952. "After BU and Northeastern and 7 p.m. opener and Boston College has crossed sticks with Harvard in other first round match, this observation may have changed. Yet before the opening whistle there is neither an outstanding favorite nor a definite weak sister among the quartet."

None of that changed when the teams converged on Boston Garden for the second tournament in January 1954, but the pounding two-day snowstorm prevented more than 711 fans from filing through the turnstiles for the tournament's first day. Featuring matchups from the previous year's championship and consolation game, Harvard advanced past BU while BC throttled an 8-5 win past Northeastern. A day later, as the storm waned and Everett Station's chaos smoldered in the distance, 2,399 fans arrived at Boston Garden for a coaching matchup between Weiland and local wizard John "Snooks" Kelley.

"BC broke loose in the final period with three goals to cement the victory," wrote Holbrook. "Jimmy Duffy, Bobby Babine and John Canniff all tallied twice for BC while Bob Gallagher played an excellent role of playmaker and set up three of the scores."

For many, winning the Beanpot tournament in 1954 was better than advancing to an NCAA championship. Kelley held rank as the only eastern coach with a national title after BC beat Dartmouth in the second-ever national tournament, but beating Dartmouth by a 4-3 final was vastly different than steamrolling past the locally entrenched matchup against Harvard or BU. In fact, the Eagles spent the 1954 championship as a 17-2-0 team, but their semifinal game against Minnesota barely drew any mention against the Bruins' 1-0 win over the New York Rangers. That same day, the Celtics squandered a 16-point lead against the Syracuse Nationals while Bob Cousy fouled out; BC-Minnesota just didn't rate.

Yet seventy years later, the Beanpot endures. The same program grabbing the center spotlight from those frozen halcyon days within Boston's culture remains an establishment unto itself despite the changing tides in college hockey. Gone are ticket stubs in favor of more secure electronic options, and the Internet, a figment of someone's imagination during the Truman administration, is exposing college hockey on a wider scale. Televised audiences across international borders carry opportunities to watch these four schools, and the players aren't locally mined or grown with the same regularity as the era before the United States National Development Program.

Still, it endures. Like so many things in Boston, it endures. It's still here, and 10 years after UMass, UMass-Lowell, Connecticut, Yale, Quinnipiac and other eastern schools threatened the prestige and elitism surrounding the Beanpot schools, the four Beanpot teams gather for one of the most heralded and star-studded tournaments in its history. Two top-ranked teams flank the two-time defending champion that's unready and unwilling to cave on its multi-championship reign. The traditional, historic school from across the river in Cambridge lurks with the understanding that February brings peaks and crests to championship hockey.

The Beanpot. The city championship. The Garden.

Boston College. Northeastern. Boston University. Harvard.

The tradition returns on Monday night.

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