No road to a national championship is easy, but none ranks as difficult as the one Yale just traversed to become the 2013 NCAA champions. The Bulldogs defeated an unprecedented three No. 1 seeds and a No. 2.

At the start of the four-game journey, little reason for optimism existed.

[scg_html_ff2013]After losing eight of their last 14 games — including an ignominious shutout weekend in which they fell 5-0 to Union in the ECAC Hockey semifinal and then 3-0 to Quinnipiac in the consolation game — the Bulldogs had to wait for the final conference tournament game in the country to find out if they’d make the NCAA tournament or not.

If Michigan defeated Notre Dame, Yale’s season would be over. But if the Irish prevailed, the Bulldogs would have life.

The Irish came through.

“We were definitely big fans [of Notre Dame] that day,” Gus Young said. “But once we knew we were in, we knew we belonged, and if we worked hard we’d be able to do something great.”

Most observers had their doubts, and not just because of the team’s stumbles entering the tournament. In the first round, Yale would face the No. 2 team in the country, Minnesota. The Gophers roster was loaded with NHL prospects.

And if somehow the planets aligned and the stumbling Bulldogs toppled the mighty Gophers, North Dakota loomed. Since the mighty WCHA had put six teams into the tournament, and Minnesota and North Dakota were presumably their finest as the two highest seeds, the odds appeared prohibitive.

“You’ve got to take it one step at a time,” Andrew Miller said. “It’s not four games. It’s game one, then game two, game three, and game four. You’ve got to take it a step at a time and a period at a time.”

It was a mantra preached by Yale coach Keith Allain.

“One of the special things about our team, and one of the qualities of all champions, is the great ability to focus,” Allain said. “If we look down the road and say we’re going to have to beat three No. 1s and a No. 2 seed, the task might have seemed daunting.

“But we went into Grand Rapids focused on Minnesota and took care of that job. We focused on North Dakota.

“When you chip away at it one at a time, [it becomes possible]. It took a great deal of effort, but it wasn’t impossible.”

The Bulldogs toppled Minnesota 3-2 in overtime, then exploded with four goals in the final eight minutes of the third period to defeat North Dakota 4-1.

In the Frozen Four semifinal game, Yale faced another No. 1 seed, Massachusetts-Lowell, a team on a 25-3-1 roll. The Bulldogs needed another overtime but continued their trend of late-game dominance, outshooting the River Hawks 23-3 in the third period and overtime to advance to the title game.

“We prided ourselves on being the hardest working team in college hockey,” Young said. “To win the championship, we knew we’d have to be the hardest working team.”

The championship game beckoned, and with it came not only a third No. 1 seed, but the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Quinnipiac. And, oh yes, the Bobcats had beaten Yale five straight times over two years, three this season by a cumulative score of 13-3.

The recipe for putting away the final team in Yale’s Murderer’s Row of opponents was the same as the one that had doomed the previous three.

“We just worried about ourselves,” Young said. “We knew if we stuck to our game plan, we knew we could beat anyone in the country no matter who we were up against.

“So we stuck to our game plan and really focused on ourselves and got it done.”

The Bulldogs won the school’s first national championship, defeating their rivals from just eight miles away in satisfying fashion, 4-0.

“Tonight was our turn,” Allain said. “Our kids were ready, committed, and congratulations to them for having a fine hockey season.”

Yale had taken the proverbial road less traveled, at least the road less traveled successfully, and as it turned out, that made all the difference.

The Yale defense is a lesson in how statistics can lie.

Entering Saturday’s national championship game against Quinnipiac, Yale was 27th in the country defensively, allowing more than 2.50 goals per game. In the NCAA tournament, the Bulldogs kept opponents to 1.25 goals per game.

[scg_html_ff2013]”People always say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” said second-year Yale associate head coach, Red Gendron, who works with the Yale defense. “We play a pretty good team game and that’s a credit to our head coach, Keith Allain, and that’s really bottom line. That’s why we won.”

The Bulldogs have had a defense-first philosophy all season but didn’t always execute that mantra consistently. Beginning with a 6-2 loss to Quinnipiac Feb. 2, Yale lost five games in a row and gave up four or more goals in four of those contests.

“First of all, defensive play is collective,” Gendron said. “When we were struggling at the midpoint of the season, I don’t think any of our players were playing particularly well. The defensemen were making mistakes and the forwards were making mistakes on coverage assignments and things like that. It was a general problem for our team.

“We had two and three freshmen [defensemen] in the lineup all year long and it takes some time for those guys to gel and develop and obviously they did. I think really when things go bad it’s a collective thing.”

Feb. 23 is when the Bulldogs broke that streak with a 4-3 win over Princeton and then a week later beat Cornell by the same score. Then came three games in which the Bulldogs allowed two total goals.

And then came the two games in which the Bulldogs were shut out in the ECAC Hockey tournament, outscored 8-0 collectively by Union and Quinnipiac.

“Coach [Allain] said it was sort of a throwaway weekend,” Gendron said. “We had played extraordinarily well for five games: the last three games of the regular season and then the [ECAC playoff] series against St. Lawrence. We had great play defensively during that time and then all of a sudden we didn’t play well defensively and we didn’t do anything offensively.

“No goals in two games is pretty poor effort in offense. We basically said, ‘Hey, this wasn’t us.’ Then we found ourselves in the tournament.”

It was a matter of time and timing that helped the Bulldogs find themselves, so to speak, in the tournament. Gendron said that the Bulldogs needed to learn when they needed to take away an opponent’s time.

“Speaking of time, it takes time to do that instinctively,” Gendron said. “Quite often, coaches will say, ‘What were you thinking out there?’ When you’re thinking when you’re playing hockey, you’re a step behind. It has to be instinctive. You have to see things, recognize patterns, and be able to anticipate and be on the move before it’s obvious to everybody else. That takes time for players to figure out, too, and certainly by the NCAA tournament, we had it figured.”

The message of the coaching staff — that defensive play is collective — is something the Bulldogs were able to demonstrate Saturday.

“Coach [Allain] preaches that when we have the puck, all five guys are on offense and when they have the puck, all five guys are on defense,” freshman defenseman Rob O’Gara said. “Defense starts in the offensive zone. When our forecheck was going like it was this weekend, it really stops the opposing team from getting out of the zone before they get started.”

“We’re firm believers in defense leading to offense,” junior forward Kenny Agostino said, “and when you’re a high-offensive transition hockey team like we are, your good defensive plays will lead to transitions and ultimately we have the offensive firepower to capitalize on those transitions.

“Defense wins championships; you hear that all the time. We knew if we were strong and defensively sound, we’d get opportunities and we’d execute on them tonight.”

“The game of hockey is pretty simple,” Gendron said. “Most attacks go nowhere. The quicker you retrieve the puck, the more time you have it, the odds are that you can generate more offensively.

“It’s a statistical problem as much as anything else.”

Saturday, the numbers didn’t lie. A 4-0 win over the top seed in the country is no statistical problem at all.

Of the nine games Yale played against Quinnipiac since Jeff Malcolm has been with the Bulldogs, he played in just three going into Saturday.

But in the biggest game of his life with a national title on the line, Malcolm made the most of an opportunity to shut down the rival Bobcats.

[scg_html_ff2013]Malcolm had a 36-save shutout in Yale’s 4-0 win over Quinnipiac at Consol Energy Center to give the Bulldogs their first national championship.

“It’s tough to not get up for a national championship game,” said Malcolm, who turned 24 on Saturday. “My day was the same as any other. I just felt comfortable in there today, and we got some bounces.”

Yale played Quinnipiac twice during the regular season in February when Malcolm was out with an injury after a Princeton player crashed into him on Feb. 1.

When Malcolm returned on Feb. 23, Yale began to roll. The Bulldogs lost all five games he missed but went 9-2 upon his return while Malcolm posted a .923 save percentage with a 1.87 goals against average.

Malcolm allowed one goal or fewer in five games since his return, with two shutouts.

“When Jeff got hurt, it was a sad feeling for our team,” Yale captain Andrew Miller said. “We were more personally worried about him. We didn’t want him to go out like that his senior year.”

Malcolm beat Quinnipiac once in his career as a freshman in 2009 but lost the two since then, including a 3-0 loss in this year’s ECAC Hockey Championship consolation game.

His career numbers against the Bobcats going into Saturday were nine goals allowed on 74 shots (.878 save percentage), but in the championship game, Malcolm shook the monkey off his back.

Quinnipiac players said they not only saw a different Yale team Saturday than the Bulldogs they’d beaten three times prior, but also a better Malcolm between the pipes.

“Yeah, that’s the best I’ve ever seen him play,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. “He’s been kind of streaky in his career there. He gets on runs.

“But, yeah, Malcolm was great tonight. You’ve got to give the kid credit. It’s the biggest game of his career, and he pitches a shutout. We had 30-something shots. I don’t know what we had. But we definitely had a lot of chances in the first two periods.”

Added Quinnipiac defenseman Mike Dalhuisen: “I saw a really good goalie. Malcolm stood on his head and he won the game for them.”

Malcolm withstood a second period in which Quinnipiac put 15 shots on goal, including seven on one two-minute power play, and stopped the Bobcats’ four high-quality opportunities around the crease.

Malcolm’s 36 saves tied his season high.

“Jeff played great all night. You could tell right from the start, he was feeling it,” Yale senior Colin Dueck said. “In the second period, he made a pretty good short breakaway stop and I knew at that point, he’s just closing the door.”