ECAC HOCKEY CHAMPION - Becker's OT Goal Gives Princeton League Title, NCAA Bid

Saturday, March 17

Lake Placid, N.Y.

7:35 PM

Princeton University

19-12-4

Clarkson

23-10-6

OT 1

Princeton

CLARKSON

Princeton celebrates the 2018 ECAC championship.

Photo by: John McCreary

ECAC HOCKEY CHAMPION - Becker's OT Goal Gives Princeton League Title, NCAA Bid

March 17, 2018 | Men's Ice Hockey

Box Score

If the last championship was 10 years ago and the one before that was 20 years ago, then the 12th-place finish had to seem like it had to be 100 years ago for the Princeton men's hockey team that was celebrating on the same ice where a miracle once occurred.

Just two years removed from finishing last in the 12-team ECAC, the 2018 Princeton Tigers are the league champion, headed back to the NCAA tournament for the first time in nine years. Forced into overtime on a stunning Clarkson goal with 6.4 seconds left, Princeton came up with one even more stunning of its own, as Max Becker knocked in Jeremy Germain's perfect feed 2:37 into overtime to give the Tigers a 2-1 win in front of 5,950 fans at the Olympic Ice Center, where the U.S. won the 1980 gold medal.

Freshman goalie Ryan Ferland was named the tournament MVP after allowing just one goal in each of the last two games, while making 31 saves in the final.

Princeton won its third ECAC Hockey championship and kept alive a streak that has resulted in a championship every 10 years, first in 1998, then in 2008 and now in 2018. To add a bit more numerical coincidence, the game-winner came from Becker, who wears number eight.

The ECAC Hockey championship concluded an amazing three-weekend run for Princeton, who first swept Brown by a combined 15-3 and then proceeded to take out, in order, second-seeded Union (in two games in the quarterfinal round), top-seeded Cornell in the semifinal and lastly third-seeded Clarkson in the championship game.

Princeton is the only No. 7 seed to ever win the ECAC and has now done it twice, in 1998 and in 2018. Both times it was an overtime win against Clarkson for the Whitelaw Trophy to head home to Hobey Baker Rink.

Not that the Golden Knights went quietly. Clarkson needed overtime to beat Harvard in the semifinal Friday night, in a game that didn't end until after 10:30. Facing off 21 hours later against a Princeton team with three hours more of rest after the 4-1 win over Cornell, Clarkson saw Princeton score first on a great Josh Teves goal off a give-and-go with Ryan Kuffner, to make it 1-0 with 3:17 left in the opening period. Max Véronneau started the play to Teves, who then passed it off to Kuffner who sprinted down the center of the ice, taking the return pass and cashing it in for the score.

Véronneau's assist was his 38th of the year, tying the school record, and 55th point, which is a new Princeton single-season record.

From there, Clarkson swarmed the Princeton net but couldn't break through, even after a power-play opportunity with a little more than two minutes left that became a 6x4 when the Knights pulled the goalie. Then, with one last chance, Clarkson won a face-off and threw one to the net, which Josh Dickinson snuck past Ferland with 6.4 agonizing seconds to go.

If all of the momentum was on Clarkson's side heading into the overtime, it didn't matter to Princeton. It took less than three minutes to end it, on a play where Germain started to take the puck around the net before he just dropped it in front to Becker, who scored to start the celebration.

Worst to first in two years. The 2018 Princeton Tigers are ECAC champions.

The NCAA tournament celebration show is Sunday at noon on ESPNU.