Princeton Announces 2008-09 Schedule

Photo by Dan Hayes-Patterson

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The 2008-09 Princeton men's hockey schedule was recently announced by Princeton head coach Guy Gadowsky. The schedule features 22 ECAC Hockey games and seven non-conference games, plus a pair of exhibition contests.

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In addition to its 22-game league schedule, the Tigers will play seven non-league games, with two coming against league foes Brown and Quinnipiac. Princeton will also host Minnesota State, Nebraska-Omaha and Robert Morris for single games, and will appear at the Rensselaer Holiday Tournament the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving.

Princeton's schedule will feature 16 home dates, all beginning with an exhibition game against Western Ontario on the afternoon of Oct. 19. Princeton kicks off the regular season the next weekend at the Shootout at Brown with a non-conference game against the Bears and an exhibition match the following day against the Ontario Institute of Technology.

Princeton will begin its defense of the ECAC Hockey championship when it opens the league slate the following weekend at home against Cornell and Colgate on Nov. 7 and 8. Both games are scheduled to be late afternoon contests with the puck dropping at 4 p.m. The Friday game against Cornell will be broadcasted by ESPNU and be the opening game of a doubleheader of Princeton athletics on the network that day, as it will precede the Princeton football game against Penn from Powers Field at Princeton Stadium at 7 p.m.

Princeton visits Quinnipiac for the first of three contests with the Bobcats the following Tuesday afternoon, and then travel to Rensselaer and Union for league contests. The Tigers travel to St. Lawrence and Clarkson the weekend before Thanksgiving, then host Quinnipiac the night before the holiday at 7 p.m.

Following a day off on Thanksgiving, the Tigers return to Rensselaer, this time to play in the team's annual holiday tournament, which is the oldest in-season college hockey tournament in the nation. Princeton will take on Northeastern in the opening game and will then match-up with either Mercyhurst or Rensselaer in the second game. Princeton last played Northeastern in the 2003-04 season and has never met Mercyhurst. The Tigers have made six appearances in the event, with the first coming in 1953 and the last coming in the 2002-03 season.

Princeton then returns home to meet Quinnipiac on Wednesday, Dec. 3 for the team's third and final meeting. This is the game that will not count towards the league standings and is the final game for the Tigers before the holiday break.

The Tigers have six games scheduled between the end of the holidays and the exam break and it starts with games on Monday and Tuesday, December 29 and 30, at home against Minnesota State and Nebraska-Omaha. Princeton then plays two league series' the next two weekends hosting Harvard and Dartmouth and Union and Rensselaer. The Harvard-Dartmouth series will be played on a Saturday and Sunday, and the games against Dartmouth and Rensselaer will be 4 p.m. starts.

Princeton will return from a 16-day layoff for final exams on Jan. 26 at home against Robert Morris, before five consecutive league weekends lead Princeton into the postseason. The Tigers visit Yale and Brown the final weekend of January, then travel to Colgate and Cornell in early February. Then its four-straight home contests as first Clarkson and St. Lawrence, and then Brown and Yale, travel to Baker Rink, before the season concludes on Feb. 27 and 28 at Dartmouth and Harvard.

The following weekend the middle four finishers in the ECAC Hockey standings host the bottom four finishers in the league's first round of the playoffs. A week later the top four seeds host the remaining four seeds with the winners advancing to the league championship weekend a week later in Albany, N.Y.

The 2007-08 Tigers set a program record with 21 wins last season. The team won Princeton's second ECAC Hockey Championship and also claimed the Ivy League title and made Princeton's second NCAA tournament appearance.