Tis The Princeton Hockey Season

Your week on TigerBlog starts with great moments in advertising.

TigerBlog was driving down the highway the other day when he saw an epic billboard. It had a picture of a guy dressed up like Santa Claus, with huge letters that spelled out the following: 

"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer? Call The Law Office Of So-and-So and So-and-So." 

Now that's funny. 

Tis the season and all. What kind of season will this end up being for Princeton Hockey? Well, it was a pretty good weekend for the Tiger men and women.

The two combined for a 3-0 weekend, with a huge overtime win for the women over No. 7 Quinnipiac and a sweep of Union and RPI for the men. 

How did the game against Quinnipiac go? Here's the first sentence from the story on goprincetontigers.com, by TB's colleague Chas Dorman:

The nation's No. 2-ranked offense (Princeton) and No. 2-ranked defense (Quinnipiac) did battle at Hobey Baker Rink in a crucial ECAC contest, and ultimately Princeton had Sarah Paul and the Bobcats didn't in a 2-1 overtime win for the Tigers.

Paul, if you haven't figured it out, scored both Princeton goals in the game. 

Princeton has the nation's top power play unit, and Paul's first goal of the game added to that. It came with 13:33 left in the third period, after Quinnipiac had gone up 1-0 with a goal in the second. 

Paul's second won it 2:06 into the overtime, with her goal set up beautifully by Jane Kuehl, who pounced on a loose puck, carried it around the goalie and fed it to the backside to a wide-open Paul.

2:54 (OT) TIGERS WIN!

Sarah Paul Times Two!

Her 2nd of the day picks up another Top-10 win for Princeton!@ecachockey | @NCAAIceHockey | @IvyLeague pic.twitter.com/jAMB4QQojq

— Princeton Women's Ice Hockey (@PWIH) December 7, 2024

The women have now won four straight and seven of their last eight. In addition to the win over Quinnipiac, Princeton also owns an 8-1 win over Boston University, who was ranked No. 13 at the time, and a 4-3 win over No. 5 Colgate.

Princeton has one more game left in the calendar year, and that's tomorrow at 6 against LIU at Hobey Baker Rink, before first semester exams begin. After that, the next game isn't until Jan. 4 — and the next home game isn't until Jan. 24. 

As for the men, it was only 10 days ago that Princeton was 1-4-1 after being swept at Colgate and Cornell. Since then? Princeton is 4-0, first with a sweep of then-No. 12 Ohio State last weekend and then an ECAC sweep of Union (2-1) and RPI (6-2) this past weekend.

All four games were at Baker Rink.

TB wrote this last Thursday: 

It'll be interesting to see how much momentum and confidence the Tigers take into those games after taking down the Buckeyes. 

As it turned out, the answer was "a lot."

All three goals Friday night came in the second period, the two from Princeton by Luc Pelletier and Noah de la Durantaye. Arthur Smith did the rest, making 27 saves. 

He made 24 more Saturday night, when Princeton found itself with much more margin of error, as five different Tigers had multiple-point nights. 

Getting back to Smith, he has been in goal for all four Princeton wins in a nine-day stretch. His numbers for those games? How about 118 saves and four goals against?

Is that good? It certainly sounds good. 

Suddenly, Princeton finds itself in fifth place in the ECAC standings, tied with Cornell and just two points out of fourth.

Like the women, the men now have a big break, first for exams and then for Christmas. In fact, it'll be 21 days between games for the men, who play again at Army on Dec. 28.

Hey, if you're not going to play for three weeks — if you're studying for exams for the first half of that time — you might as well be able to enjoy how things went going to the break. 

For Princeton's two hockey teams, that's certainly the case. 

And if Grandma got run over by a reindeer? You know whom to call.