The Middlebury Panthers men's ice hockey team represents Middlebury College in men’s hockey and has done so since 1922 (with the exception of a few years during World War II). The Panthers currently play at the Division III and have won the most championships (8) of any D-III program. For a time the team did play along with top-level programs but when men's ice hockey divided into separate tiers in the mid-1960s Middlebury left the upper echelon.
History
Middlebury played as an Independent program, as all schools did officially, prior to 1950 but the Panthers were a founding member of the NCAA's first ice hockey conference, the Tri-State League. The Panthers remained in the conference for nine years but through most of that time they were pushed around by the national powers Clarkson, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence. Towards the end of their tenure in the conference, however, Middlebury did land a recruit who would rewrite the NCAA record book.
Phil Latreille joined the Panthers in 1957 and began playing immediately. Normally, freshmen did not play for varsity squads as the NCAA only allowed players eligibility for three seasons. However, because Middlebury wasn't in contention for the national tournament, they could ignore that NCAA regulation. Latreille scored 36 goals in only 20 games in his first year then set a new single-season record with 57 goals as a sophomore. For his third season, Latreille shattered his record with 77 goals and capped that off with a senior season of 80 goals and 108 points. No other player in NCAA history has even scored 60 goals in a season. Latreille held the points record for 24 years before being surpassed by Bill Watson, who played in more than twice as many games in his record-breaking campaign. Latreille still holds the NCAA record for career goals at 250 with second a distant 94 goals behind (Chuck Delich). Latreille's scoring exploits were so spectacular that he was able to parley them into a brief appearance with the New York Rangers after graduating. While he didn't stick in the National Hockey League, Latreille remains Middlebury's only alumnus to play in the NHL.
After Latreille left, Middlebury became one of the 28 founding members of ECAC Hockey, remaining with the conference for three seasons. By the end of the 1963–64 season it was obvious that ECAC Hockey had to make a change and the conference divided itself into upper- and lower-tiers. This was the first formal delineation of men's ice hockey and Middlebury was one of the 14 teams that founded ECAC 2. The Panthers played well under Wendall Forbes and typically finished in the top half of the conference. In 1971 Middlebury was again a founding member of a conference, this time for the NESCAC, though because the new conference didn't sponsor ice hockey as a varsity sport the Panthers remained with ECAC 2.
By the mid-1970s ECAC 2 had become just as ungainly as ECAC Hockey had been, boasting 31 programs by 1977. Rather than split into separate conferences, ECAC 2 divided itself into East and West Divisions with both playing separate postseason tournaments. Middlebury won its first conference tournament in 1979 but because NESCAC rules prohibited them from participating in any national tournament the Panthers didn't receive an invitation to the 1979 Championship.
When the NCAA instituted numerical classifications in 1973, Middlebury became a Division III school but the ice hockey program played at the Division II level. This continued for a decade until the NCAA instituted a Division III Championship and, while the Panthers could not participate in the tournament, most of their contemporaries were able to play in the championship. As a result, almost the entire D-II level dropped down to the lower tier with Middlebury going along. During the change came a formal split for ECAC 2 with Middlebury founding yet another ice hockey conference, this one called ECAC East.
In the mid-'80s Forbes stepped down and was replaced by Bill Beaney. It took Beaney a short time to rebuild the program and five years after he took over the Panthers won both the conference regular season and tournament titles. In 1994 the NESCAC changed its rules to permit its member teams to play in one postseason tournament, either conference or national, and a year later Middlebury made its first appearance in the Division III championship. Middlebury jumped in with both feet and won each of their games, including the championship over #1-ranked Fredonia State to capture the school's first national title in any sport. Beaney kept the panthers at the top of Division III and won five consecutive national championships (1995–1999), setting an NCAA record for any level of play.