One loss, one image for the ages

It’s not an image of the moment when a UMD forward scored to end the game in overtime. Nor is it an image of the moment when a UMD defenseman scored to tie the game with less than a second remaining in the third period. Actually, it came just a few moments after that.

From our perch in the press box, we watched the action unfold in the seconds after the tying goal was scored: Bulldogs skated to their bench to celebrate, Tigers despondently wandered to their bench to regroup. Only one person didn’t move a muscle after the goal was scored: senior forward Brett Wilson.

He just lay there on the ice — legs outstretched in front of him — in the same position he had been in seconds earlier when he had gone down to block a shot taken on the Princeton net. He didn’t move for nearly 30 seconds, sitting there as if frozen in time. One couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking about at that moment.

Maybe he was thinking about what it had been like when he first arrived on campus in 2005: The men’s hockey team came off a season in which it finished 10th in ECAC Hockey, going 8-20-3 on the season. The team hadn’t enjoyed a winning season since the 1998-99 campaign, and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry. But there was an inkling of hope with the arrival of a new head coach, Guy Gadowsky, a year earlier. Perhaps he could be the one to turn the lackluster program around. Still, there wasn’t much of a program to build on back then, and the Tigers had a long road ahead of them.

Or maybe Wilson was thinking about his rookie campaign, when he finished second on the team in scoring and was named to the ECAC All-Rookie squad. Princeton had once again finished with a losing record, but it had moved up a spot in the ECAC standings: The Tigers were no longer the league’s doormat.

Or maybe he was thinking about the 2006-07 season and then-captain Darroll Powe ’07, whom Gadowsky can hardly go a day without mentioning. Powe nearly led Princeton — who finished just one game under .500 that season — to a winning record, mentoring almost every younger player along the way.

Or maybe the right wing was thinking about last season, when the Tigers finally reached the top of the mountain, winning the ECAC championship under the leadership of Mike Moore ’08 and Kyle Hagel ’08. This was the year when Wilson and his close friend Lee Jubinville, an assistant captain this season, established themselves as the most dangerous linemates in the league, scoring a combined 75 points and earning All-ECAC honors.

Or maybe Princeton’s leading active points scorer was thinking about this season, when the Tigers began play in an unfamiliar role as the hunted rather than the hunters. For the first time, the Tigers weren’t the plucky underdogs, looking to finally make a name for themselves and the program. Instead, Princeton was the one with the target on its back. The hopes of a .500 overall record seemed like a distant memory by then.

Or maybe he was thinking about last month’s ECAC playoffs. In the first round, the Tigers edged out Union two games to one in a chippy series that was capped by Princeton’s 3-1 victory. At the end of the game, Wilson — who has developed a reputation as a bit of an agitator over the last four years — had his stick broken by a Union player, and he proceeded to tap his opponent on the helmet with it before waving a taunting goodbye from the bench as both players were sent to their respective locker rooms. The next weekend, Wilson and the Tigers earned their second berth to the NCAA tournament in two years.

Or maybe Wilson was thinking about what had transpired earlier in the game, when the forward — whom Gadowsky claims simply “has a nose for scoring” — tallied two of Princeton’s first three goals to put the Tigers in the driver’s seat. Thanks to Wilson’s efforts and goals from freshman Derrick Pallis and senior captain Brandan Kushniruk, Princeton took a two-goal lead into the final minute of the game. Somehow, just as it happened a week earlier against Cornell in the ECAC tournament semifinal, the Tigers had that two-goal lead snatched from right under their noses.

But what Wilson was actually thinking about was the fact that the team still had a chance to win. Despite allowing a goal that could only be described as back-breaking, Wilson and the rest of the players still wanted to realize the dream of making their mark on the program’s history. It was a dream that endured for another 13 minutes and 39 seconds before UMD finally put the Tigers away.

“Obviously, we have a pretty empty feeling right now,” Wilson said after the game. “We wanted to give Princeton its first NCAA win after getting here two years in a row.”

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But maybe the most important thing to take away from that enduring image of Wilson, sprawled on the ice in motionless disbelief, is the fact that the Tigers were in such a position in the first place. Wilson, Jubinville and Kushniruk will all graduate as the first Princeton hockey players to finish their careers with a winning record in almost a decade.

In the end, that dream, that disappointment, that disbelief — all things that no one thought possible when Wilson and his classmates stepped foot on campus four years ago — are what made this year’s team a special one, one that won’t soon be forgotten.