Courtesy Bowdoin Sports Information

Box Score

BRUNSWICK, Maine – Middlebury senior captain Charlie Townsend scored the game-winning goal with 1:42 remaining in the third period to give the Panthers their eighth NESCAC Men’s Ice Hockey Championship, 3-2, over Bowdoin on Sunday at Sidney J. Watson Arena. With their fourth win over the Polar Bears in the title game, the Panthers (19-4-4) earn the league’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The NCAA appearance will be the 14th for the Panthers, who missed the tourney for the last two seasons after going every year from '95-'07.

Bowdoin (19-6-1), who lost for the first time in nine games, will hope for an at-large bid when pairings are announced Sunday night.

Mathieu Dubuc gave the Panthers a two-goal lead after one period of play with a pair of power play goals. After a too-many-players penalty against Bowdoin, Middlebury wasted little time converting, taking the initial faceoff and getting a perfectly played pass from Charlie Strauss on the wing to Dubuc in front, who slammed home a one-timer at 3:45 of the opening frame. The Panthers took advantage of a 5-on-3 power play later in the frame when Dubuc converted on the back post from Nick Resor with 18 seconds left in the period.

Bowdoin cut the lead in half midway through the second period as Ryan Blossom broke in alone on Yanchek short-handed, deked the Middlebury netminder, and tucked home the puck at 7:11. The teams traded thrilling 5-on-3 chances late in the frame with neither team finding the back of the cage as the game entered the third period.

After a frantic first 10 minutes to the stanza, Kyle Shearer-Hardy took control of the puck for Bowdoin at the blue line and fed Blossom on the left wing. Blossom circled around one defender and slapped a shot inside the left post to deadlock the game with 9:23 to play.

With the game seemingly destined for overtime, Middlebury chipped the puck out of its defensive zone to neutral ice where Townsend won a fight for the puck with under two minutes to play. Townsend skated into the Bowdoin zone and ripped a shot from the right circle that found the top-left corner with just 1:42 to go. The Polar Bears pulled Rossi with 1:34 remaining, but could not find the equalizer as Middlebury skated to victory.

Rossi (14-1-1) was outstanding in his first loss of the season, making 25 stops for the Polar Bears. Yanchek (13-2-2) stopped 17 shots in all, including eight in the third period. Middlebury went 2-for-7 on the power play as Bowdoin accumulated 27 minutes of penalties for the afternoon. The Polar Bears went 0-for-4 with the extra man. The game was played in front of a packed house of 2,300 at Watson Arena and a peak viewership of over 1,100 people on the video webcast.

2010 NESCAC MEN'S ICE HOCKEY CHAMPIONSHIP
Quarterfinals - Saturday, Feb. 27
Time TBA at Higher Seeds
No. 8 at No. 1
No. 7 at No. 2
No. 6 at No. 3
No. 5 at No. 4

Semifinals - Saturday, March 6
at Highest Remaining Seed
1:00 p.m./4:00 p.m.

Championship - Sunday, March 7
2:00 p.m.

Format
The top eight teams in the conference will qualify for the NESCAC Men's Ice Hockey Championship. First round games will be conducted on Saturday, February 27, 2010 with the semifinals and championship games conducted on Saturday, March 6 and Sunday, March 7, respectively.  The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA Division III Championship. 

Format if Men and Women are Playing at the Same Site
Preliminary Round
If both a men's and a women's first round game are being played at the same site, both games shall be played on Saturday with scheduled start times of 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.  In odd years the men's game will be played first and in even years the women's game will be played first.

Semifinal and Championship Round
If both the men's and women's semifinals and finals are being played at the same site, one of the championships will be conducted Friday evening and Saturday evening.  As the men's NCAA championship tournament starts earlier than the women's championship, the men's games will be played on Friday/Saturday (with game times of 4:00 p.m./7:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.) with the women's games played Saturday/Sunday (with game times of 12:30 p.m./3:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.).

Seeding
Teams will be seeded based on games scheduled in conjunction with ECAC East. The top four seeds will host quarterfinal games with the one seed drawing the 8th seed, the 7th seed will play at the 2nd seed, the 6th seed will play at the 3rd seed, and the 5th seed will play at the 4th seed. The highest remaining seed after quarterfinal action will host both the semifinal and final rounds.

Pairings
Pairings will be announced Saturday, February 20.

Tie Breaking Procedures
Ties will be broken as follows:

Head-to-head result (if teams play each other more than once during the regular season, the game that appears on the league schedule will be the game that is counted).

If teams tied during the regular season, or there is a 3-way or more tie, the following tie breaking procedure will be used:

• Best record among tying teams, against one another (head-to-head).
• Most conference wins (in games that are part of the conference schedule and count toward league standings).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 4 teams (including all teams at the 4th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against top 8 teams (including all teams at the 8th spot).
• Comparison of results of conference games played against conference teams in rank order.
• Comparisons shall be made one team at a time starting with the highest ranked team.
• If the tie remains after comparing results against the highest ranked team, the results against the next team in rank order shall be used. This process is continued until a winner is determined.
• Coin flip (or similar random action involving all tied teams).

Note: In case of ties among three or more schools, the criteria above will be applied in order until a team is (or teams are) separated.  At that point, the process begins anew (returning to the first criteria) with the remaining teams.  The process is continued until the tie is eventually broken.  In cases where only a random action will break the tie of three or more teams, the random action will be applied to all teams involved in the tie.  For example, if three teams are tied and only a random action (pulling names out of a hat) will break the tie, each name will be pulled and seeded in order of being pulled.  Also, in the event that there are two (or more) groups of teams tied at different spots in the standings and the only criteria left that can be used to break those ties is a coin flip/random action, the coin flip/random action used to break the tie of one group (to put teams in rank order) will not affect the tie breaking procedures of the other group(s) of tied teams.