This year's Boston College hockey team earned itself a special status within the program's record books because it reinvigorated one of college hockey's most storied brands. Even before the season started, lofty expectations placed an immense amount on a team that hadn't advanced to the Hockey East championship game since 2019 and hadn't competed for a national championship since the COVID-impacted year of 2020-2021, but delivering on those expectations with the first regular season championship of the post-Covid era allowed BC to ascend to a top-ranked status that it hadn't earned in years.
For too many years, a sport built around dynasties watched individual teams replace one of its original Northeast powers after Northeastern, UMass-Lowell, and UMass claimed their first banners at TD Garden.