On January 28, longtime Brown men’s hockey head coach Brendan Whittet announced he’d be stepping down from the post he’d occupied since 2009 to focus on a family medical issue. We wish the Whittet family all the best, and hope everyone is healthy and well.

Brendan Whittet served as the steward of Brown men's hockey for nearly two decades.

Coach Whittet’s last game as coach was February 14, when the Bears knocked off a top-10 Dartmouth team with a dramatic last-minute goal from Ben Poitras that came shortly after Brown had lost the lead. It’s poetic, really, that his last game came against the Big Green; Whittet is a Bob Gaudet disciple who spent years in Hanover as an assistant to his former college head coach. And it was terrific to see Coach go out with a bang, despite the Bears suffering through a poor season overall.

While the circumstances of his departure are saddening, we’d like to focus on the good times we’ve had over the years during the Whittet era. We’ve compiled a list of the most exciting, important, meaningful, impressive, or simply memorable games spanning the past 17 years.

This exercise was a fun trip down Memory Lane for me. I (Kevin) was entering my senior year in high school when Whittet kicked off his first campaign following a painful final few years of Roger Grillo’s tenure. He's been the coach at Brown for over half my life, which feels crazy to say. The Passage of Time remains undefeated.

Over the years, Brown fans saw three trips to the ECAC semifinals, one championship game appearance, a handful of upsets against teams ranked #1 in the country, an intense back-and-forth rivalry with a then-dominant Yale team, and some exciting, talented players like Harry Zolnierczyk, Dennis Robertson, Matt Lorito, Nick Lappin, Sam Lafferty, Tom Marchin, Tyler Kopff, and more.

I’ve chosen the games I think are most significant and recounted them to the best of my ability — with some help from the meticulously detailed archives from College Hockey News and old videos I was able to chase down.

Just to get it out of the way: I’m cheating a bit on some of these. I elected to focus on a couple huge playoff series wins instead of individual games. I’m also giving additional weight to playoff games, since the stakes are higher. Spoiler alert: you’ll be seeing a lot of Yale.

Let’s kick it off with a fun one from recent times.

Honorable Mention: 2025 vs. Harvard: T, 3-3 (SOW)

“Wait a minute,” you may find yourself saying, “a regular season tie against a middling Harvard team almost made this list? How?”

It’s a fair question. But consider the stakes: the Bears, in the finale of their best regular season in several years and with an impressive collection of undergraduate talent that portended good things in the future (until the transfer portal opened, that is), were fighting Princeton and RPI for the final home ice playoff spot and needed a point against the Crimson to clinch. Early on, it was a disaster: Harvard jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period while Princeton opened up their own multi-goal lead against Clarkson. A late Ryan St. Louis goal gave Brown a lifeline at the tail end of the first period, but the score would remain 3-1 deep into the third period.

Enter Tyler Kopff. The electrifying sophomore power forward was on a tear toward the end of the season, and he continued his strong play against the Crimson, scoring a pair of nearly identical power play goals to tie the game at 3-3 and send it to overtime to send the crowd at Meehan Auditorium into delirium. The point allowed the Bears to clinch the eighth seed in the playoffs to lock down home ice (it didn’t hurt that Princeton coughed up their lead and went to overtime against Clarkson, eliminating themselves in the process). After a scoreless overtime session, the Bears won a shootout, 2-0, as co-captain Max Scott and — you guessed it — Kopff cashed in on their chances.

It was a resounding way to cap a dramatic comeback for the most exciting Brown team in at least a decade, if not longer.

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10. 2014 vs. #4 Boston College: T, 3-3

Another tie??? What’s going on here??

Despite the final score, this one was special. Brown had not hosted a team of BC’s caliber since the juggernaut Cornell teams of the early 2000s, and Meehan had certainly not seen a non-conference game against such a prominent team since…well, probably since Brian Gionta’s Eagles took a 6-3 decision in 1997, Roger Grillo’s first season at the helm.

This BC team featured an electric top line of the late, great Johnny Gaudreau, 13-year (and counting) NHL veteran Kevin Hayes, and assistant captain Billy Arnold, each of whom tallied at least 53 points. Gaudreau would ultimately win the Hobey Baker award after putting up a ridiculous 80 points and leading the Eagles to the Frozen Four.

And yet, Brown came out and took the game to BC, going toe-to-toe with the Eagles for 60 minutes. It was a back-and-forth affair that saw three lead changes en route to a thrilling 3-3 tie.

In front of the first sold-out crowd at Meehan since 2004, the Bears took a 2-1 lead into the third period against the high-flying visitors. BC would tie the game at 3 early in the third period, but Brown struck back just 25 seconds later on a Massimo Lamacchia wraparound that somehow snuck under Thatcher Demko’s pads.

But BC wasn’t done, finding a late equalizer on a fluky shot off the rush that took a deflection off a Bear and popped up over freshman goalie Tyler Steel’s head, fluttering into the far corner of the net. The game ended in a tie after a scoreless overtime, but the result was a positive one for Brown, which was building momentum leading up to the following weekend…

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9. 2014 vs. #10 Yale: W, 3-1

Coming off the heels of impressive draws at a ranked Denver team and at home against a top-5 Boston College team, the Bears returned to Meehan to host reigning national champion and bitter Ivy League rival, #10 Yale. To provide some context, Brown and Yale had battled fiercely during the early years of Coach Whittet’s term. Despite the Bulldogs enjoying their best extended stretch in program history under alumnus Keith Allain’s tutelage, the plucky Bears routinely pushed them to their limits, notching a 7-5 record against Yale from 2009-2014.

Brown was also coming off a successful 2013 campaign, as they rode lights-out goaltending from surprise senior starter Anthony Borelli (who finished the season with a .942 save percentage) to an appearance in the ECAC Tournament title game, which they lost 3-1 to a Union team that would turn around and win their own national championship in 2014.

After a somewhat slow start to the 2013-14 season, the Bears turned it on midseason. They carried tremendous momentum into the matchup with Yale at Meehan, and they made their opportunity count, scoring a cathartic 3-1 win over the visitors in front of a second consecutive sold out crowd at Meehan.

However, the joy was short-lived. Brown’s season started to fall apart after the win, as the Bulldogs pummeled the Bears in the return game at Ingalls Rink the following night, 6-0 — the start of a miserable 3-10-0 finish that dropped Brown out of the running for a home playoff game.

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8. 2025 ECAC Tournament First Round vs. Princeton: W, 3-2

This one had it all. The stage was set on the final day of the regular season, as recalled above in the section about the Harvard game.

The Bears and Tigers had played two overtime games in the 2024-25 regular season, with Brown taking a shootout win in Providence after a 1-1 affair and then winning 3-2 at Princeton late in the season on a Ryan St. Louis goal in the extra session. The bad blood between the two sides was palpable from the opening puck drop.

It was a tight, vintage playoff hockey game throughout, with an engaged and lively crowd on hand to match the fraught tension on the ice. Princeton struck midway through the first period before St. Louis (in the midst of scoring four goals against the Tigers over the course of the season) broke up a cross-point pass and scored on a breakaway within the opening minute of the second.

The game would remain tied into the third period, as the teams traded half-chances but ultimately never truly threatened each other’s netminders as they struggled to crack through their stifling, structured defensive setups.

But someone had to win the game, and Tyler Kopff was ready to step up as the hero for Brown. Collecting the puck in the neutral zone off a St. Louis takeaway and touch pass, Kopff used his size, speed, and strength to take the puck hard to the net and beat Princeton goalie Ethan Pearson to the far post, tucking it in as the hapless Tiger defenders flailed at him.

St. Louis would add a late empty netter before Princeton found a goal within the last five seconds of the game to cut the score to 3-2. The Bears were moving on to the ECAC quarterfinals for the first time since 2019.

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6. 2016 Mayor’s Cup vs. #1 Providence: W, 4-3 OT

The 2015-16 season was pretty miserable for Brown. Despite having some significant talent on the roster — including First Team All-ECAC standout Nick Lappin, rookie phenom Tommy Marchin, dependable two-way center Mark Naclerio, and a trio of sophomore NHL draft picks in Sam Lafferty, Max Willman, and Tyler Bird — the Bears stumbled to an unexpected 5-19-7 record.

Meanwhile, former commits Kevin Roy (150 points in 130 career games) and Miles Wood (35 points in 37 games) were tearing up Hockey East at Northeastern and Boston College, respectively, leaving a bitter taste in Brown fans’ mouths.

But as was the case at times during Brendan Whittet’s tenure as head coach, the Bears were good for a shock result against a team they had no business beating. This time, it was defending national champion and #1-ranked Providence College, loaded with future NHL players and one of the best goalies in college hockey, Nick Ellis (.935 save percentage).

The two teams had met a month prior in the first leg of a home-and-home, aggregate goals Mayor’s Cup (a format that was scrapped after just a few years). The Friars took that one by a 4-1 score across town at Schneider Arena. The Bears had little reason to expect a win, let alone one by a margin substantial enough to overcome the three-goal deficit and win the Cup.

And maybe PC felt the same way. Brown jumped out to an early lead, catching the heavily favored Friars by surprise. A pair of PC goals (the second coming on an absolute howler by Brown goalie Tim Ernst, who gave the puck away to a forechecker while playing it behind the net, leaving a wide-open cage) propelled the Friars them a 2-1 advantage at the end of the first period. The teams traded goals in the second before Charlie Corcoran tied the score at 3-3 with about six minutes remaining in the period.

A scoreless third ensued, as both teams struggled to break through offensively. The tied score meant the Friars had officially clinched the Mayor’s Cup, since it was of course mathematically impossible for Brown to score three goals in overtime. But that didn’t deter the Bears from taking the game to the Cup winners.

A flurry of opportunities led to a rebound that popped out to Marchin, who was staring at an open net. He finished past a sprawling Ellis, and Brown had knocked off the #1 team in the country — while ironically not winning the trophy that was up for grabs in the game.

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5. 2026 vs. #8 Dartmouth: W, 4-3

I’ll fully admit that there’s some real recency bias here. But, c’mon. How could I not include Brendan Whittet’s swansong here? Especially after I waxed poetic about it in the immediate aftermath.

The 2025-26 season was a lost year for the Bears, as poor play on the ice eventually became overshadowed by the announcement that Whittet would be stepping down to devote his full attention to his family as they navigate a difficult situation. Brown entered the game in the midst of a dreadful 1-14-2 funk that derailed the season before it even really took off. The weekend prior, they had lost 9-1 at Quinnipiac, a game that seemed like a tacit acknowledgement that the wheels were falling off the wagon.

But the Bears wouldn’t let their beloved coach depart without a signature moment. The eighth-ranked Big Green, in pursuit of breaking the nation’s longest NCAA Tournament drought dating back to 1980 (which would pass the drought baton to Brown), came to Meehan for a late afternoon Valentine’s Day date. Fittingly, as a young assistant at Brown, Whittet had followed his former head coach and mentor Bob Gaudet when Gaudet left Brown in 1997 to return to Hanover and take the reins at his alma mater.

Brown struck early, as Matt Desiderio (who ironically will be playing for Dartmouth next fall, much to our chagrin) beat Emmett Croteau at 6:19. But the Bears fell asleep on the ensuing faceoff, and Dartmouth stars Hayden Stavroff and Hank Cleaves combined on a nifty passing play that tied the score just seven seconds later.

The back-and-forth play continued in the second period. Ivan Zadvernyuk (another intra-Ivy League traitor who’ll play for Cornell next season) scored a power play goal to give the Bears a 2-1 lead before Cleaves struck again to tie the score at 2 midway through the period. With just over two minutes remaining, Michael Salandra tipped a shot from Owen Dyer past Croteau, and Brown took a 3-2 lead into the third period.

Despite largely keeping Dartmouth at bay in the third, the Bears gave up the tying goal in the final minutes while the Big Green operated with a 6-on-4 advantage. Ben Poitras took a silly penalty to give the visitors the man advantage, and it seemed as though his mistake might sink the upset effort.

But Poitras showed some moxy, as he did many times throughout the season, and combined with linemates Ivan Zadvernyuk and Charlie Gollob for a beautiful goal off a Dartmouth turnover near their own blue line. He beat Croteau top shelf on a nifty backhander with 57 seconds remaining in the game — a mere 32 seconds after Dartmouth’s tying goal.

The Green were shocked. They furiously threw pucks at the net in an attempt to tie the game again in its waning moments, but Brown defenders sold out to block shots and prevented any real scoring chances. The Bears held on for a 4-3 victory over the future ECAC Tournament champions and saw off their longtime coach with a resounding win over an Ivy rival.

It was a poetic ending for a man who gave so much to Brown hockey for the majority of his life.

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4. 2019 ECAC Tournament Quarterfinals @ #1 Quinnipiac: Won series, 2-0

Of all the entries on this list, this one makes the least sense to me. Consider:

The 2018-19 Bears entered the season with incredibly low expectations. They’d lost leading scorer Sam Lafferty to graduation after a disappointing 8-19-4 season the previous year, and they’d been humiliated in the opening round of the ECAC Tournament by Princeton, falling 8-2 and 7-1 to the Tigers.

Captain Tommy Marchin had himself a terrific freshman campaign at Brown, but the following two seasons had seen his point production regress. Outside of junior forward Brent Beaudoin (15 points) and defensemen Max Gottlieb (15) and Zach Giuttari (16), there wasn’t much returning in the way of scoring.

Brown’s goaltenders had been similarly underwhelming in 2017-18: Luke Kania put up a .902 save percentage as a freshman after sophomore Gavin Nieto lost the starting job and recorded just an .891 save percentage on the year.

The 2018-19 season started perhaps as many expected, with Brown falling into a 1-6-3 hole right off the bat. It looked like another bleak season was on hand on College Hill.

But then, the inexplicable happened: the Bears simply couldn’t stop winning. A 13-game stretch spanning most of December, January, and the first couple weeks of February saw Brown compile a 9-4-0 record to vault themselves into the discussion for home ice in the ECAC Tournament. Two of those losses came at the hands of a Providence team that would make the Frozen Four, and among the wins was one at Quinnipiac that perhaps should have portended the Bobcats’ ultimate demise at the hands of the Bears.

While Brown limped to the regular season finish line with a 1-3-2 record down the stretch, they’d secured home ice and a date with the same Princeton Tigers who’d demolished them the previous year in the playoffs (and the week prior to close out the regular season). But we’ll get into that series later.

In sweeping Princeton, the eighth-seeded Bears clinched a date with the top-seeded Bobcats in Hamden, CT. Brown and Quinnipiac had met thrice before in the ECAC Tournament, each time in Hamden, and with each series ending in a decisive Bobcats’ victory. And despite the surprise road win by Brown in the regular season, Quinnipiac boasted a 9-1-1 record against the Bears over their past 10 meetings.

Brown didn’t have any stars in 2018-19. Marchin finished with 26 points in 34 games; no one else even topped 20. Both Kania (.912) and Nieto (.909) were solid, but not spectacular in net. So, like…on paper, nothing about this team’s hot streak made sense. They weren’t driven by a star forward who put the team on his back, or an elite goalie who stole games. It was a solid group of guys who mostly would have been depth players at other ECAC schools.

And yet.

Brown entered its first ECAC quarterfinal series in six years as the heavy underdog. Game 1 seemed to be going to script: through two very low-event, tight-checking periods, Quinnipiac held a 1-0 advantage. Rand Pecknold teams don’t tend to relinquish leads against inferior opponents; they’re one of the best in the country at locking down the defensive end and controlling possession for long spells so the opponent can’t generate chances.

But the Bears were zipping the puck around in the third period, outshooting the Bobcats 12-5. They eventually found the tying goal with just 22 seconds left, as a whirling desperation shot from Beaudoin caught Quinnipiac’s star netminder Andrew Shortridge by surprise and hopped over his pads.

The Bobcats were stunned, and that appeared to carry over into overtime, as the Bears once again doubled the home side up in shots (14-7). With three minutes remaining in the frame, it was time for another hero to step up from the cast of gritty Brown forwards, as Jack Gessert scored his third (and final) career goal, tucking the puck through Shortridge’s five hole after a funky carom off the back boards.

Brown had shocked the Bobcats, 2-1, for their second straight win in Hamden — and set up a pivotal Game 2 the next night.

With their backs against the wall, Quinnipiac came out roaring, taking a 2-0 lead after the first period thanks to a pair of goals by Alex Whelan. Neither team was able to find the net in the second, and it seemed as though the Bobcats were on cruise control.

But the never-say-die Bears wouldn’t go down easily. A lightning-quick pair of goals within the first two minutes of the third period tied the score at 2-2, as Brown grew into the game and began to impose their forecheck on the suddenly beleaguered hosts.

Enter Beaudoin and Marchin. The former broke up a play at Brown’s blue line, beat a pair of scrambling Bobcats down the ice for a clean breakaway chance, and buried a wrister under Shortridge’s blocker to give the Bears their first lead in the series with just 8:39 remaining in Game 2. Just two minutes later, Marchin collected a bouncing puck off a faceoff draw and snapped it past Shortridge for his second of the period, improbably extending the lead to 4-2.

Quinnipiac got one back with 1:56 to go and an extra skater, but the Bears survived the final push to hang on for a 4-3 win. They’d swept the top-seeded Bobcats and advanced to the ECAC semifinals for the first time since 2013, and to the tournament’s rightful home in Lake Placid for the first time since 2003.

The story of the 2018-19 team ends there, unfortunately, as they were brushed aside by Cornell in the ECAC semifinals, 6-0. But Brown fans will always remember the valiant effort by a group of heart-and-soul players who turned around what seemed to be another lost season, claimed home ice in the first round of the ECAC Tournament for just the second time in 15 years, and advanced to the semifinals. It was a remarkable run by a group that truly exceeded the sum of its parts.

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3. 2010 ECAC Quarterfinals @ #6 Yale: Won series, 2-1

Somehow, this was the only game or series I couldn’t find any video footage of, which is a shame. I remember huddling around my mom’s computer as a high school senior watching a potato-quality feed on some long-defunct subscription streaming service or another. Here’s a random live blog from the Yale Daily News that I came across. Rory Gilmore could never.

The Bears took on a fearsome Bulldog team that was looking to repeat as regular season and conference tournament ECAC champions. This was Brendan Whittet’s first season as the head coach at Brown, and the Bears certainly had their fair share of struggles even if they’d taken significant steps forward from the previous season’s disastrous 5-23-5 campaign (two of those wins came in a shock upset of Harvard in the ECAC Tournament). Brown had taken on Yale in the second round of the 2009 tournament, playing the Bulldogs tough but ultimately dropping a pair of two-goal games and going home Saturday night.

The two teams had played a couple of barn burners in the 2009-10 regular season, as Yale took a wacky 6-5 overtime win in Providence that featured a Brown rally erasing a pair of three-goal deficits. They would repeat the goal scoring bonanza in New Haven two months later in an 8-5 Bulldogs win.

Maybe Yale wasn’t expecting Brown to be able to stymie their potent offense after such outbursts. Maybe they were caught looking ahead to bigger and better things than hosting a pesky 11 seed in the quarterfinals. Maybe they simply got goalie’d. Or maybe it was all of the above.

Irrespective of the root cause, Brown did the unthinkable at venerable Ingalls Rink: they took two games out of three to eliminate the juggernaut Bulldogs from the conference tournament and advance to Albany for the conference semifinals.

Lightning struck twice for the Bears early in the second period to break a 0-0 deadlock. First, Jeff Buvinow scored just seven seconds into the period. Then Aaron Volpatti doubled the advantage about a minute later, gobsmacking the Bulldogs and their partisan home crowd. A Yale power play goal early in the third period temporarily relieved some of the tension in the air for the favorites, but Bobby Farnham answered for Brown 1:17 later to put the visitors back up by two. Yale scored a late goal with the goalie pulled, but the Bears hung on for a 3-2 victory that raised some eyebrows around the greater college hockeysphere.

Upsets happen, and the Bulldogs made a point Saturday evening to come out firing on all cylinders. They took a 4-0 lead into the third period, ultimately winning 6-3 after some back-and-forth scoring. It seemed as though the favorites were back on track to advance to Albany.

Enter Mike Clemente. The sophomore goaltender had himself a sensational freshman season, sporting a .930 save percentage despite playing on a truly awful team in Roger Grillo’s final season at the helm. His numbers took a fairly dramatic drop his sophomore year, as he finished with a .902 save percentage — in some part due to the more up-tempo style of play Whittet had implemented in his inaugural season, but also as a result of his own struggles to find consistency.

In spite of his up-and-down second year at Brown, Clemente was still capable of stealing games when he was at his best. Such was the case on a mid-March Sunday evening in New Haven.

Leading scorer Jack MacLellan put the Bears up midway through the first period of Game 3 with a shorthanded breakaway goal. It would prove to be the only time either netminder was beaten all night. Despite Yale’s onslaught of shots and premium chances, Clemente refused to crack. He finished with 44 saves, 19 of which came in the third period as the Bulldogs relentlessly pushed for a tying goal.

It was to no avail. Brown had upset the #6 team in the nation in a best-of-three series on the road in their alumnus head coach’s first season in charge. The vibes were immaculate as the Bears headed to Albany for their first appearance in the conference semifinals since 2003. However, their season ended in the same manner: a shutout loss to Cornell. This time, though, Brown blanked St. Lawrence in the third place game to finish on a high note. With most of their key players returning the following season, the future under Brendan Whittet looked bright.

2. 2013 ECAC Tournament Semifinals vs. #1 Quinnipiac: W, 4-0

Despite the exciting postseason run in 2010, Brown wasn’t able to make much progress the following two seasons. They had some big wins in that period: thumping a blue blood in Boston University, 6-1; upsetting #1 Yale; and knocking off other ranked opponents like Cornell and Quinnipiac. But the overall theme of that era was “one step forward, two steps back.”

That changed in the back half of the 2012-13 season. After an up-and-down regular season that saw them finish with a final record of 11-12-6, the Bears went on a legendary postseason run buoyed by senior goaltender Anthony Borelli. He had come out of nowhere to steal the starting job after junior Marco De Filippo had a string of disappointing performances, despite Borelli having played just seven games in his three years on campus.

Borelli would finish with a .942 save percentage across 28 games, good for fifth in the nation — well ahead of east coast household names like Jon Gillies of Providence College, Troy Grosenick of Union, and Case DeSmith of New Hampshire. Brown hadn’t seen a goaltending performance of this caliber since Hall of Famer (and rightful 2004 Hobey Baker winner, which is a hill I will continue to die on) Yann Danis’ senior season.

Borelli led Brown through the first two rounds of the ECAC Tournament, besting Clarkson in two games at Meehan Auditorium (the first time Brown had hosted a home playoff series since 2005) and then upsetting second-seeded RPI in three games in Troy, NY.

That set the stage for one of the most truly bizarre sporting events I’ve ever been to: the ECAC semifinals and title game at famed Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ.

The Bears faced the unenviable task of taking on the #1 team in the country, Quinnipiac, which would go on the finish as runners up in the 2013 NCAA Tournament. Brown had played the Bobcats to a pair of ties in the regular season, so there was some degree of confidence that they could steal a win from the heavy favorites.

But I’m not sure anyone saw a complete romp coming.

While the Bobcats outshot the Bears 15-7 in the first period, Matt Lorito and Garnet Hathaway scored to give Brown a 2-0 lead. It seemed likely that Quinnipiac would push back in the second and continue their significant shot advantage; instead, they started to wilt. Brown increased its pressure in the period and added a third goal from seldom-used senior forward Francis Drolet off a net-front scramble. Then, as the frustrated Bobcats took a slew of penalties, Lorito cashed in on a 5-on-3 opportunity to extend the lead to 4-0.

Rand Pecknold gave goaltender and Hobey Baker finalist Eric Hartzell the hook in the second period in a shocking turn of events. Hartzell had been an absolute rock for Quinnipiac all season, and the goals weren’t necessarily his fault. Pecknold appeared to be trying to spark his team with the change.

It didn’t work. The Bobcats came out listlessly in the third period, as Brown held them to just five shots, and neither team scored. The Bears had knocked off the #1 team in the ECAC and the country on the big stage, and they’d done so convincingly.

The win set up a championship game meeting with #18 Union the following night, Brown’s first appearance in the final since 1993. The Dutchmen ended up winning a clinical defensive battle, 3-1. But the title game run was an extraordinary feat for Whittet’s Bears, who’d defied the odds and shown tremendous resolve in knocking off the second seed (RPI) and first seed (Quinnipiac) en route to the final.

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1. 2019 ECAC First Round Game 2 vs. Princeton: W, 6-5 (3OT)

I mean…how could it be anything else? I’ll be lying on my death bed with what’s left of my brain resembling Greek yogurt and I’ll still remember this game. I’d never seen anything like it in person, and I haven’t since.

To set the stage, Brown had scored a tidy, uneventful 3-0 win over Princeton in Game 1 of this ECAC Tournament First Round series. When the Bears jumped out to a 2-0 lead midway through the first period of Game 2, chasing Princeton starting goalie Ryan Ferland in the process, it felt like they’d coast to another clean win. But Princeton struck on a power play late in the period to gain some momentum, then tied it in the second, sending the game into the third period deadlocked at two.

Thus began the shenanigans.

Tommy Marchin opened the third period scoring 1:11 into the frame, putting the Bears back on top, 3-2. Brown added two more in the back half of the period, culminating in a 5-2 lead with 4:37 remaining in the game. Once again, it felt as though the win was secured and the Bears would coast on into the semifinals.

Uh, no. It’s never that simple with Brown hockey. Why would it have been this time?

Princeton pulled off the unthinkable: they scored three goals in the final 3:36 of the game with the goalie pulled to shock the Bears and send the game to overtime at 5-5. Much of the crowd had already dissipated by the time the Tigers evened the score, figuring a Brown win was in the bag.

The first overtime was a bit of a slog, and neither team was able to create much offense. Brown took control in the second extra period, outshooting Princeton 13-7 and on several occasions seriously threatening Ferland, who had returned to the net after his replacement Jeremie Forget allowed a couple goals in the third (that’s how I remember it, anyway; Princeton’s goaltending was a revolving door that night and it was very bizarre. I could be messing up the order there). The game remained tied after 100 minutes of play.

The remaining crowd grew exasperated: how many chances would it take to finally get that elusive sixth goal and end the game (and series)? What would a decisive third game look like the next day? Could these teams really be expected to turn around and play even more hockey if Princeton won? And how long could this game conceivably continue?

[Editor’s note: as an aside, my now-wife (who has a passive interest in hockey, but isn’t a hardcore fan) made the mistake of attending this game with me only a few months into our relationship. I repeatedly apologized for the ordeal and told her she was welcome to go home early, but she stuck it out with a forced smile on her face. Our friend who had joined us bailed midway through the second overtime. Get you a girl who etc. etc.]

As the clock struck 11 pm, the third overtime session began. The Bears were all over the Tigers from the jump, notching an 8-1 shot advantage in the first few minutes. Princeton had relied heavily on its top six forwards throughout the game, and the fatigue had begun to show in the earlier overtime periods. Meanwhile, Brown essentially rolled four lines — as mentioned above, there were no true stars on this team — allowing them to remain fresher as time wore on.

And it paid off. At 3:30 of the third overtime period, senior Alex Brink collected a puck on the boards, eluded a Tiger to cut to the middle of the ice, and flipped a backhander top shelf past…whoever was in net for Princeton at that point. The Bears and their fans were elated, and perhaps relieved.

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But we weren’t done yet: the play was reviewed for a potential offside call prior to the game-winning sequence. The officials reviewed for what felt like hours (but in reality was probably somewhere in the ballpark of 10 minutes). I still have not seen a conclusive shot of that particular play — Meehan famously does not have a video board, and there was no available replay to watch the next day — but some fans of other teams have sworn the Bears were ever-so-slightly offside.

The officials, however, were unable to overturn the call on the ice with the evidence at their disposal. After the long, torturous review, Brown had won the game in dramatic fashion, eliminating Princeton and moving on to the ECAC Quarterfinals in the process.

The reaction around the college hockey world was significant for an ECAC game between two middling teams. As College Hockey News’ recap aptly put it, “[w]henever something is the first or the longest or the most in Brown history, that's really saying something.” Mark Divver described it as “a game like no other across all the decades of Brown wins, losses and ties.”

This was indeed a special event; an all-time memory for the nation’s first men’s hockey program, which has seen plenty of history made over its first century. It certainly felt historic as we exited the hallowed halls of Meehan Auditorium around 11:45 pm on a Saturday night in March of 2019.

Thank you, Coach!

That’s a wrap. I hope you’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane as we revisited some of the highest highs of the Brendan Whittet era. While it’s impossible to sum up 17 years of blood, sweat, and tears in a single article, these games stuck out to me as the best examples of Brown hockey under the longtime head coach.

Brown hockey has a fresh face at the helm (shameless plug) for the first time in nearly two decades. But Coach Whittet’s fingerprints are all over this program, and his dedication to the team and university will never be surpassed. We thank you, Coach, for your tireless efforts, and we wish you and your family the best.

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