The 1999-2000 academic/athletic year for St. Lawrence University was a pretty special one.
It started out with an undefeated and untied march to the NCAA Division III Mens Soccer Championship, the first team to have an unblemished (22-0-0) record en route the national title and the winter season concluded with a record-setting NCAA quarterfinal game and a trip to the NCAA Frozen Four.
That 1999-2000 hockey team is being honored this weekend on its 25th anniversary of a historic season. It was the second team in program history to win the ECAC regular season and tournament championships and earned a bye into the NCAA East Region quarterfinals. That game against Boston University took four overtimes to decide and was the longest game in NCAA tournament history at the time. St. Lawrence freshman goaltender Derek Gustafson and BU’s Rick DePietro put on a goaltending clinic as the two teams battled through three overtimes deadlocked at 2-2. Gustafson finished with 72 saves on 74 shots and DePietro, also a freshman had 77 saves on 80 shots.
Robin Carruthers finally ended the game at 3:53 of the fourth overtime period when he put his own rebound back past DePietro after Jim Lorenz dug the puck out of a scrum along the sideboards and got it to Carruthers, who walked in on DePietro scoring the winner 123:53 after the initial puck drop.
That historic goal sent the Saints on to the Frozen Four for the first time since 1988 and while Boston College ended the St. Lawrence season with a 4-2 semifinal win at Providence, the 27-8-2 1999-2000 season is the third most successful in program history in wins, trailing only the 1987-88 and 1988-89 teams which each won 29 games.
Senior defenseman Justin Harney and sophomore center Brandon Dietrich were named All America for the 2000 season while Gustafson was ECAC Rookie of the Year, Harney best defensive defenseman, Dietrich was a first team forward as was Erik Anderson. Coach Joe Marsh was Spencer Penrose Award winner as NCAA Division I Coach of the Year.
St. Lawrence beat Cornell 3-2 in overtime in the ECAC tournament and won the title with a 2-0 win over Rensselaer. Gustafson was the all tournament goaltender and most outstanding player and was joined on the all tourney team by Harney, Jason Windle and Dietrich.
And, that four-overtime affair against BU proved to me that I actually could quit smoking. While the actual quitting didn’t take place until September of 2000…the long fill ins between periods let me know I could do it.