LAKE PLACID, N.Y. — Just when it seemed Princeton’s incredible postseason run couldn’t get any better, it did.
Senior Max Becker scored 2:37 into overtime to give the Tigers a 2-1 win over Clarkson in the ECAC Hockey Championship game before a raucous crowd of 5,950 at the Herb Brooks Arena.
It was the first time that Princeton had won the Whitelaw Cup since 2008. Becker’s winner came after the Golden Knights’ Nico Sturm tied the game with 6.4 seconds left in regulation.
Both Clarkson and Princeton will learn their NCAA opponent and destination Sunday at noon. Regular season champion Cornell will also earn an at-large bid to the national tournament. Had Clarkson won, it would have been the first time since 2012 that ECAC Hockey had less than three teams make the NCAA tournament, as Princeton wouldn’t have qualified for an at-large bid.
“This one is tough. It’s tough for the seniors, because they don’t get another crack at it,” Golden Knights coach Casey Jones said of Clarkson coming up short in winning its first conference championship since 2007. “But we’re in a really good place because of that group of guys that collectively set a phenomenal culture.”
Seventh-seeded Princeton (19-12-4) enters the NCAA tournament on a seven-game winning streak. The Tigers senior class won four games during their entire freshman season, which was coach Ron Fogarty’s first year at Princeton.
“It’s a testament of all the classes that have come to Princeton,” Becker said. “It’s a pretty surreal moment to have gotten here in the first place and now to have gotten a championship. We’ve definitely come a long way in the last four years.”
It’s been a slow progress since Fogarty’s first season, as the Tigers have seen incremental improvements each of the last three years.
“We knew that just keep working on the systems and structure that wanted to see would pay off in the end,” Fogarty said. “We knew it would take some time. We knew we were playing the right way our second year, we lost a lot of one-goal games, but they were tighter. Last year to get around .500 was pretty critical for our program.”
Princeton goalie Ryan Ferland was named the tournament’s most outstanding player. The freshman made 31 saves Saturday, including several big stops during a Clarkson power play in the closing minutes as the Golden Knights pulled goalie Jake KIelly (21 saves) for an extra attacker. But the Golden Knights found the equalizer right before time expired.
Sturm, who leads the country in faceoff winning percentage, won a draw in the Princeton zone and then went to the net, where he redirected a shot past Ferland to tie the game at 19:53. That set the stage for Becker, who beat Kielly from the top of the crease. The play was set up by Jeremy Germain, who skated behind the net before throwing the puck out front to a waiting Becker.
The Tigers’ first goal came at 16:43 in the first, when defenseman Josh Teves took a pass from Ryan Kuffner on the rush and fired a shot between Kielly’s legs and into the net. Max Veronneau picked up the secondary assist on the play, setting a new school record with his 55th point of the year. It was also the junior’s 38th assist, which tied a school single-season record.
Princeton beat the conference’s three top teams en route to winning the Whitelaw Cup. The Tigers swept No. 2 Union in the quarterfinals, and then beat top-seeded Cornell Friday before defeating No. 3 Clarkson on Saturday. That run has been sparked by a vastly improved defense. Princeton is 12-2-2 since Jan. 13, and have allowed three goals or less in all but three of those games.
“Our defensive game is something that we worked a lot on,” Teves said. “It hasn’t always been there but we take a lot of pride in it.”
Fogarty said the Tigers’ improved defensive play started with playing smarter and improved their play in the neutral zone.
“The neutral zone is so key in college hockey and we started to prevent a lot of clean skates in [it],” Fogarty said. “We were turning over a lot of pucks at the blueline midway through the season and we started to take care of the puck and do those [other things] and we’re ECAC champions because of it.”
But before the on-ice adjustments, the Tigers’ had to be confident in the direction they were heading, even if the on-ice results weren’t there.
“We’ve just had a belief it’s come from Ron all the through our entire program, that we’re going to get here and we’re going to win the championship,” Teves said. “From Day 1, obviously some of the tough times we had into tonight, I think that belief has never wavered.”
NOTES: The only other seventh-seeded team to win the conference tournament was the Tigers in 1998, when they beat Clarkson in overtime… Princeton has won three league championships in program history – 1998, 2008, and 2018. Becker, who wears No. 8 and is a native of Orange, California, said his parents were in the crowd… Becker, Teves, Eric Robinson and Clarkson’s Rempal and Kelly Summers were named to the all-tournament team.
