St. Lawrence Saints Men's Ice Hockey | |
---|---|
University | St. Lawrence University |
Conference | ECAC |
Head coach | Mark Morris 1st year, 15–7–6 (.643) |
Captain(s) | Alexander Dahl |
Alternate captain(s) | Eric Sweetman Ben Masella Gavin Bayreuther |
Arena |
Appleton Arena Capacity: 3,200 |
Location | Canton, New York |
Colors | Scarlet and Brown |
NCAA Tournament Frozen Four | |
1952, 1955, 1956, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1988, 2000 | |
NCAA Tournament Appearances | |
1952, 1955, 1956, 1959, 1960, 1961r, 1962, 1983, 1987, 1988r, 1989, 1992, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2007 | |
Conference Tournament Champions | |
1962, 1988, 1989, 1992, 2000, 2001 | |
Conference Regular Season Champions | |
2000, 2007 | |
Current uniform | |
The St. Lawrence Saints Men's Ice Hockey team, colloquially known as the "Skating Saints", is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I college ice hockey program that represents St. Lawrence University. The Saints are a member of the ECAC Hockey. They have played at Appleton Arena in Canton, New York, since 1951. Prior to the arena's construction, the men's team played outdoors at the current location of Whitman Hall.
Since the team's inception in 1925, the Saints men's hockey program has been a competitive team at the top ranks of American college hockey. Due to World War II, there were no teams during the 1941–42 season, or the 1943–44 through 1945–46 seasons.
The team plays in the ECAC Hockey League, one of six Division I leagues. This league currently includes six Ivy League teams, including perennial powers Cornell and Harvard as well as six colleges from upstate New York and Connecticut. Since the inception of the ECAC in 1961, SLU has won six ECAC tournament titles and two ECAC regular season titles.
Since the 1951–52 season, SLU has made sixteen NCAA tournament appearances. St. Lawrence has been to the Frozen Four and its antecedent the four team NCAA Championships a total of nine times, playing in the title games in 1961 and 1988. St. Lawrence has accomplished this despite being, at approximately 2,000 students, one of the smallest colleges to play at the Division I level. A Division III school in all other sports, St. Lawrence has maintained Division I "play-up" status in hockey thanks to a 2004 NCAA resolution, allowing it (along with 11 other schools) to offer Division I scholarships in only one sport. St. Lawrence did not offer grant-in-aid hockey scholarships until the mid-1990s.
In 1988, the Saints played in the NCAA national championship game at the Olympic Arena in Lake Placid, NY, losing to Lake Superior State University 4–3 in overtime. The 1987-88 season was the most successful in team history, with an overall record of 29–9–0. In 2000, the Saints played in the longest NCAA tournament game on record; a 3–2, quadruple overtime victory over Boston University. The win advanced the Saints to the Frozen Four, where the team eventually lost to Boston College in the National Semifinals. The Men's program has produced twenty-eight All-American players, seven ECAC tournament MVPs, six ECAC players of the year, four ECAC rookies of the year, and nine Hobey Baker Memorial Award finalists.