The Yale Bulldogs men's ice hockey team represents Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and is the oldest collegiate ice hockey team in the United States. The Bulldogs compete in the Ivy League and the ECAC Hockey League (ECACHL) and play their home games at Ingalls Rink, also called the Yale Whale.
Ingalls Rink, home of the Yale Bulldogs.
Early History and Founding
Most historians agree that the first organized game of ice hockey was played in a Montreal skating rink in 1875. After the sport’s inception in Canada, it took nearly 20 years for ice hockey to make its way to the United States. It was not until Yale student Malcolm G. Chace, class of 1896, was introduced to the game by members of a Canadian hockey club in 1892 that he, alongside several of his Ivy League friends, decided to adopt the sport at their respective schools.
In no time, ice hockey swiftly replaced the once-popular ball-and-stick game of ice polo in the Ancient Eight. After athletes from Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia and Brown competed in Canada for four years, the first intercollegiate ice hockey event, a contest between Yale and Johns Hopkins University, was played in 1896. Chace led the Yale team as captain in their game against Baltimore on February 14, 1896, winning 2-1. Over a century later in 1998, Yale established the position of Malcolm G. Chace Head Hockey Coach in his honor. A portrait of Chace hangs in The Schley Room at Ingalls Rink.
In the early years of the program, the team played under the direction of captains in a player-coach role and team managers. Despite not having an official head coach, the team proved successful in the early years of the program playing various amateur athletic clubs and a growing number of intercollegiate teams at various schools in the Northeast.
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Yale won its first intercollegiate championship in the fourth season of the program in 1899 when the Bulldogs went 6-0 through the season. Yale continued its early success winning the intercollegiate championship in each of the next three seasons.
The Yale University hockey team in 1896-97.
On February 22, 1904, the Bulldogs played their 100th game at the St. Fred Rocque became the program's first head coach in the 1916-17 season, during which the team finished with ten wins and four losses. The following two seasons from 1917 to 1919, the team only played three games due to the World War.
Following the break, Talbot Hunter took over as head coach for the 1919-20 season. Hunter's Yale team began the season on a five-game trip to Canada, the first time an American university would make such a trip. During the rest of the 1919-20 season and through the 1920-21 season Yale played home games in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Auditorium and Ice Palace due to poor ice conditions at the Bulldogs home rink.
Clarence Wanamaker took over as head coach after serving as the coach of Dartmouth from 1915 to 1920. Wanamaker would become the first multi-year head coach in program history and led the team from 1921 to 1928.
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Mid-20th Century
The Quadrangular League was created for the 1933-34 with Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth. In 1938, the university hired former New York Rangers player, Murray Murdoch to take over the hockey program. Murdoch quickly turned the Bulldogs team around, after three consecutive losing seasons, he recorded back-to-back 10-win seasons followed by a 12-win and 14-win season.
Seasons were shortened from 1942 to 1946 during World War II and following the war Army joined the Quadrangular League and it became known as the Pentagonal League in 1946-47. Army left the league after two season, but was replaced by Brown.
In the 1951-52 season, the Bulldogs swept through the Pentagonal League with a 6-1-0 league record and finished the regular season 16-7-0. The team received a bid to the 1952 NCAA Ice Hockey tournament. It was the first Frozen Four appearance by the university.
The four-team tournament, still in its early years, having first been played in 1948, was held at the Broadmoor Arena in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Yale lost to the hometown Colorado College Tigers but won the consolation game 4-1 over St.
ECAC Era
In 1961 Yale and the other members of the Pentagonal League joined various other schools in New England to form the 28-team ECAC Hockey. After two seasons a number of the smaller programs split leaving the ECAC with the Ivy League schools and a number of other Division I programs.
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Murray Murdoch ended his tenure as Yale head coach after 27 seasons in 1965. Tim Taylor, a 1963 Harvard graduate and Crimson assistant coach from 1969 to 1976 under Cooney Weiland, took over the Yale program in 1976 after a number of losing seasons, including the 1974-75 season when the team finished 1-21-1 (.065). With Taylor behind the bench, the program turned around and within two seasons Taylor lead the Bulldogs to a 14-win season.
In the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons, Yale reached back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time in program history. That same season, on November 15, 1986, Yale beat rival Harvard 7-5 to win the 100th game of the Taylor era. Yale won its first ECAC Regular season Champion in the 1997-98 season.
Yale made the 2006 ECAC playoffs and faced Union in the best-of-3 series first round series. After winning the first game 2-1 in overtime the second game of the series on March 4, 2006, was tied 2-2 at the end of regulation. Tim Taylor was let go at the conclusion of the 2005-06 season after 28 seasons as head coach of the team.
The Keith Allain Era
In 2006 Keith Allain, a 1980 graduate of Yale, was named the school's eighth coach in program history and first new head coach in 30 years. Allain coached his first game as head coach on October 21, 2006, when Yale played McGill in an exhibition game. His first NCAA game and NCAA win came on October 27, 2006, against Holy Cross 2-1.
After finishing his first season 11-17-3, Allain's Bulldogs rebounded the following season recording a 16 win season. Yale captured the Cleary Cup for ECAC Regular season Champions in the 2008-09 season. The Bulldogs followed the regular season by sweeping Brown in the ECAC Quarterfinal Round then getting a 4-3 win over St. Lawrence 4-3. In the ECAC Championship, Yale shut out Cornell 5-0 for the program's first ECAC Playoff Championship.
In the 2010-11 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey rankings, the Bulldogs ranked number 1 in the poll in December 2010 for the first time in the history of the poll. Yale finished the regular season second in the ECAC but won the ECAC playoffs with a 6-0 win over Cornell in the finals. The Bulldogs advanced into their third consecutive NCAA tournament.
Yale was seeded first in the 2011 NCAA Ice Hockey tournament and placed into the East Regional, held in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In the opening round the Bulldogs came close to an upset but defeated the fourth-seeded Air Force 2-1 in overtime. The win over Air Force sent the hometown Bulldogs to the East Regional Finals where they would take on three-seeded Minnesota-Duluth.
In the 2012-2013 season, the Bulldogs won another Ivy League Championship. The team finished fourth in the 2013 ECAC tournament after losing to Union 0-5 in the semifinal and falling to Quinnipiac 0-3 in the third-place match. Despite their disappointing showing in the ECAC tournament, the Bulldogs qualified for the last at-large bid in the 2013 NCAA tournament thanks to Notre Dame's victory over Michigan in the CCHA Tournament final.
In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the 15th-seeded Bulldogs shocked 2nd-seeded Minnesota, winning 3-2 after forward Jesse Root scored 9 seconds into the overtime period, the fastest overtime goal in the history of the NCAA tournament. The next day, the Bulldogs defeated North Dakota 4-1, earning them their first berth in the Frozen Four in 61 years.
In the Frozen Four semifinal, Yale defeated University of Massachusetts Lowell 3-2 on captain Andrew Miller's overtime goal. In the final, the Bulldogs defeated 1st-overall-seeded Quinnipiac 4-0 for their first NCAA Division I National Championship.
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Starting in 1998, the head coach position has been known as the Malcolm G.
Club Hockey
Club hockey at Yale University began in 1958 when a group of young men joined together to form a team called the “Urps.” However, this team folded shortly thereafter and any information regarding their schedules or opponents is unknown. Much later in December 2003, the club hockey team was reinstated at Yale after an absence of 44 years.
Practicing began in January 2004 and the team competed in its first game on February 7 at Princeton (L 2-10). Yale club hockey embarked on its first full campaign in October 2004. The team won its first game of the season, a 9-3 victory over Columbia that served as retribution for a 6-7 OT loss to the Lions the prior year.
During the 2004-2005 season, the team would play 10 games, including contests against new opponents Coast Guard, UConn, UPenn and SCSU. 2005-2006 marked Yale club hockey’s first full winning season at 7-4-0. The season was highlighted by two come-from-behind OT shootout victories against Columbia (W 6-5) and Babson (W 3-2). Both of these wins came on the road. The team’s four losses came against only two opponents: Fairfield and Fordham.
Rivalries
Ever since the Quinnipiac Bobcats moved to the ECAC, they have become one of Yale's biggest non-Ivy rivals. The rivalry is dubbed the Battle of Whitney Avenue as the two campuses are separated by a mere 8 miles on Whitney Avenue in Hamden, Connecticut, to New Haven, Connecticut. The two teams met on April 13, 2013, for the fourth time in the 2012-13 season in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to play for the national championship.
Individual Records
- Most goals in a game: John Heron, 8 (vs.
- Most assists in a game: 3 players, 6 (last time: John Sather vs St.
- Most points in a game: John Heron, 8 (vs. Jack St.
Season-by-Season Results
The following table summarizes Yale's performance in NCAA Division I men's ice hockey:
| Season | Result |
|---|---|
| 1952 | Lost Semifinal, 3-4 (Colorado College) Won Consolation Game, 4-1 (St. |
| 2006 | Lost Quarterfinal, 2-4 (St. |
| 2008 | Won Quarterfinal series, 2-0 (St. |
| 2009 | Won Quarterfinal series, 2-0 (Clarkson) Lost Semifinal, 0-7 (St. |
| 2010 | Lost Quarterfinal series, 0-2 (St. |
| 2011 | Won First round series, 1-0-2 (St. |
| 2012 | Lost First round series, 0-2 (St. |
| 2013 | Won Quarterfinal series, 2-0 (Brown) Won Semifinal, 4-3 (St. |
| 2014 | Won Quarterfinal series, 2-1 (St. |
| 2015 | Won Quarterfinal series, 2-0 (St. |
| 2016 | Lost First round, 2-4 (St. |