Hobey's 100th

Had Hobey Baker been asked when he graduated from Princeton in 1914 to describe how someone at Princeton might dress for a hockey game in 2023, he probably would have described the outfit that TigerBlog's colleague Chas Dorman wore this past weekend at the rink that has Baker's name.

In fact, the rink has had Baker's name for 100 years, which is what the celebration this past weekend was about. Chas, who put a ton of work into the festivities for the weekend, was certainly dressed the part for such a centennial, that's for sure.

Here, you can check out his Twitter feed:

A Magical Day At Baker Rink!#Hobey100 was everything we could have hoped for!

Thank you to everyone at Princeton who helped pull the day off and for humoring all my crazy ideas! pic.twitter.com/qjY1RBKkVH

— Chas Dorman (@ChasDorman) January 8, 2023

See what TB means? 

The best part of the look is that Chas can totally pull it off. If TB tried that, it wouldn't work nearly as well.

Here's to Chas and his fashion statements.

And to what he and several others did to make the weekend so special. 

The Stanley Cup was there. Princeton's women Olympians were there. The games, all four of them, were filled with excitement.

The women set an attendance record, and had the top ECAC crowd this year, with 1,544 at Baker Rink Saturday. 

The women swept their two, knocking off Dartmouth 5-2 and Harvard 3-0. The men split their games, losing a heartbreaker in overtime Friday to ninth-ranked Harvard 4-3 and then bouncing back 22 hours later to beat Dartmouth 4-2.

How much more can you ask from one weekend?

The historian in TigerBlog hopes that, as Hobey Baker Rink was celebrated, Hobey Baker the man has not been forgotten. Maybe he's naive to think that Baker's exploits at Princeton are well known to the current generation, but their definitely worth remembering.

Baker was already a legend when he came to Princeton from St. Paul's School in New Hampshire in 1910. He played freshman football, hockey and baseball, but rules at the time prevented him from playing three varsity sports, so he gave up baseball.

He appears to have chosen wisely, as he is in the College Football and Hockey Halls of Fame. His exploits at Princeton as an athlete — and a sportsman — were unprecedented. His exploits after Princeton made him one of the most iconic figures that college athletics has ever seen. It didn't hurt that every picture of him makes him look like a Hollywood movie star.

Baker would play in exhibition hockey games for the St. Nicholas club team while working business in New York City after he graduated, and huge crowds would come see him play. Bored with all of that, he found a new fashion in flying and then in war, and he died in a plane crash shortly after the end of World War I when he was testing a refurbished plan after he had been given his orders to return home. 

Did he do it on purpose? It remains a great mystery.

Baker died on Dec. 21, 1918, at the age of 26. Princeton announced it would build a new hockey rink and name it for Baker. It opened the first week of January in 1923, and it obviously turned 100 last weekend.

The wins for the women's team left the Tigers in sixth place in the ECAC standings, seven points behind fourth place (which would mean home ice in the playoffs) and then seven points ahead of eighth (the top eight qualify). Next up is a trip this weekend to Cornell and Colgate.

The men find themselves tied for third place, chasing a first round bye that goes to the top four teams and also trying to stay at least in the top eight, assuring home ice for the first round of the playoffs. Next up for the men are two non-league games, against LIU Friday at 7 and Providence a week from tonight at 7, both at home. 

The next ECAC games for Princeton are the 20th and 21st, also at Colgate and Cornell. There's another home game against LIU on the 28th, a single-game weekend at Dartmouth on Feb. 3 and then the return to back-to-backs. By then, the rest of the league will have caught up to Princeton in games played, as the Tigers have played 13 to date, most in the league, whereas everyone else has played between eight and 12.

There is a lot of exciting hockey to be played the rest of the season, but that's looking forward. For now, it's one more look back, to a celebration weekend of an arena, and to the man whose name that arena has had for 100 years now.

In the history of Princeton Athletics, there is nobody who compares to Hobey Baker.