Union head coach Josh Hauge faced a decision in his locker room on Saturday night.
His Dutchmen were already in the throes of an emotional night, and he needed to determine if he wanted to throw the added mix into the fire.
The team had entered the weekend tied with RPI, its Capital District rival, for the final transfer spot to host ECAC Hockey’s single-elimination first round, and after losing to top-ranked Quinnipiac on Friday night, the only way to grab one more game at the Achilles Center was to defeat Princeton in the last game of the season.
It was Senior Night in Schenectady, but Hauge didn’t want to spend too much time focusing on the possibility of another game in Messa Rink because he simply wanted the roster playing its best hockey without worrying about the numbers. At the same time, he realized that, in this age, there was no way to bottle word about scenarios or anything like that.
So he decided to make one simple mention and let the rest of the night take it from there.
Less than a minute into the first period, the Dutchmen answered any and all questions for him when they scored the game’s first goal. A couple of hours later, a win over the Tigers clinched what might have once felt like an impossibility – a home game this weekend in the postseason, ironically against the same team now relegated to the road by last week’s zero points taken against RPI and Union.
“The biggest thing for us has been to focus on playing the right way,” Hauge said. “We’ve been trying to play the way that we want to, as a group, and at some point, we’re going to have to go on the road if we want to make it to Lake Placid. If we got some home games, we thought it was great, but we wanted to make sure we were playing our best hockey heading into.
“That’s what we were working towards.”
Gaining that last home game involved a couple of strokes of luck for a team that once registered five out of a possible 24 points over an eight-game conference stretch between November and mid-January. Three points over St. Lawrence on Jan. 20 helped, but 12 points taken from Colgate, Yale and Brown boosted the Dutchmen and created separation between themselves and a Bears team that struggled with a brutal schedule down the stretch.
They rode the wave with their travel partner, and as the final two weeks approached, both teams appeared within striking distance of Princeton, which spent the second half of the season sliding closer to the two teams battling for eighth place.
Each still needed help, but as Yale started beating the Tigers with a 4-0 home win, a door crept open. RPI had previously seized enough initiative to allow itself through the front gate with a 3-1 win over Dartmouth, but Union failed in its attempt to catch the Tigers after it lost 1-0 to the Big Green after battling Harvard for the better part of Friday night.
That loss dealt a particularly damaging blow towards the team’s home ice quest. Princeton was still within reach, but the three-point advantage over both RPI and Union meant both teams needed a win, a situation easily compounded by the Tigers’ travel partner, Quinnipiac.
“I thought we played pretty well against Harvard,” Hauge said. “We had some opportunities, but Harvard just made some plays and, in the end, they beat us. With Dartmouth, I thought we lacked the energy in that game that allowed us to compete at a high level, and we have to be really dialed into our structure. That was missing, and Dartmouth did a really good job of frustrating us. It was a little disappointing, but we knew we still had an opportunity with Quinnipiac and Princeton coming to town.”
The simplest way forward was both the one that occurred and the one that involved the three teams. Quinnipiac expectedly defeated both teams to wrap up a 20-win ECAC campaign, and after RPI beat Princeton on Friday night, the final home slot fell to the head-to-head matchup between the Tigers and Dutchmen.
“We knew we’d have to play well just to give ourselves a chance [against Quinnipiac],” emphasized Hauge. “For us, again, it was just about tightening everything up. We’d have some games that got away from us against top teams in the conference, so it was important that we saw how we stacked up against a top team right before playoffs.”
The easy-to-understand formula generated the organic postseason drama expected around this time of year, but Union ensured the sparks and fireworks fizzled immediately after the game started when Josh Nixon scored shortly after the first minute expired. It held up through the first period, and in the second period, senior Chris Theodore scored on a rebound to ignite the home crowd with a 2-0 lead.
“You don’t have a script where you plan to score early,” laughed Hauge, “but you just want to establish your pace for the game in the first five minutes. Getting that first one was a bit of relief because we were kind of like, okay, the guys are ready to go here.
Liam Robertson later made the score 3-0 in favor of Union, and the Dutchmen assured themselves of one more home game with a 3-1 victory over Princeton. It triggered a celebratory mood best exemplified by goalie Merek Pipes’ entry into the game’s final seconds. He relieved Connor Murphy, who made 22 saves, and made a stop on one last shot that drew smiles from his teammates and brought the conversation back to one more game, one more time that the seniors would have a chance to play an opponent at home.
“We were super excited for Merek to get that opportunity,” Hauge said. “The football team was at the game, and they brought a ton of energy. The student section was going nuts, and then he made a save. It was a pretty special moment for him and the bench.
“I think, for us, we didn’t want to get on a bus if we didn’t have to. This allows for our fans to pack our place for one more game. We have all week to sell this game out and make sure it’s a crazy atmosphere. Our guys have an opportunity to skate one more game at home, so that’s exciting for them.”
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About that first round…
Completing the regular season brought a final ending to the wild, unpredictable 2022-2023 ECAC campaign. Quinnipiac clinched the Cleary Cup well before the final day with a 20-2 record that made the Bobcats the first team to ever record 20 wins in an ECAC regular season since the league expanded to 12 teams. Their record broke a record set by the 19-2-1 mark set by the 2002-2003 Cornell Big Red and bettered the 18-2-2 record set twice over by the 2004-2005 and 2019-2020 Big Red.
They will host whichever is the lowest remaining seed in the best-of-three Quarterfinal series with Harvard and Cornell clinching two of the other four byes, though the Crimson edged the Big Red for second place by a two-point margin.
The fourth spot went to St. Lawrence, which slid into the first-round bye after Colgate lost to Yale on Friday night and was forced into a shootout by Brown on Saturday. A Saints loss to Harvard kept the Raiders in play for Saturday night, but after they successfully rallied from two second period goals by the Bears, tying the game before the third period, the shootout win meant SLU snuck into the fourth spot by beating Dartmouth
The rest of the playoff matchups filled in with expected outcomes after Union moved its way into eighth. Clarkson finished sixth without much of a challenge from anyone in the league’s bottom half, and the ensuing chaos around eighth created the following matchups for this week’s winner-take-all event:
No. 12 Dartmouth at No. 5 Colgate
No. 11 Brown at No. 6 Clarkson
No. 10 Yale at No. 7 RPI
No. 9 Princeton at No. 8 Union
Unveiling the Lerchies, ECAC edition
When I covered Atlantic Hockey, I somehow always managed to unveil our end-of-season awards. The weird timing of it all meant I nicknamed the awards after Chris Lerch, and as a result, the Lerchies were born without a single thing he could do about it. There was one year where he renamed them the Rubies to get back at me, but since I’m covering ECAC now, he really can’t stop me.
I’ll be unveiling this year’s Lerchies over the coming couple of weeks, so stay tuned for the debate. I, of course, look forward to hearing about how I got them all wrong or how you all agree with them.
