The Beanpot is back — with a few unique flavours

It’s been about two years, but Boston’s iconic college hockey showcase is back once again.

The Beanpot returns to TD Garden tonight and next Monday for what was once an annual tradition until that whole COVID-19 pandemic thing got in the way. And things are going to be more than a little, shall we say, off from what you might expect.

For instance, Northeastern has won the last three Beanpots, and the year before that Harvard took the title. But those four performances broke up a run from 1994 through 2016 of either Boston University or Boston College winning every single year, which made the Beanpot boring and bad. Fortunately, this run is a stunning feat in the history of this tournament — BC and BU have never had winless droughts this long in the 70 years since they started running the tournament.