April 3, 1993: The University of Maine men’s hockey team, under the leadership of coach Shawn Walsh, wins the NCAA Division I men’s hockey championship in Milwaukee, playing against Lake Superior State University.
It is the team’s first national title. Maine is down 4-2 after two periods, but the team’s all-time leading scorer, Jim Montgomery, who later will have a 12-year playing career in the National Hockey League, scores a hat trick in the third period to put Maine ahead 5-4 – the final score.
The team’s members also include future NHL star and 2017 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Paul Kariya, who notches an assist on each of Montgomery’s three goals; and Garth Snow, who also played 12 years in the NHL and then was general manager of the NHL’s New York Islanders for 12 years.
UMaine ended the season with a 22-1-1 record in conference play and 42-1-2 overall.
The team wins a second national championship under Walsh on the same date in 1999 in Anaheim, California, defeating the University of New Hampshire 3-2 in overtime in the Frozen Four final.
Joseph Owen is a retired copy desk chief of the Morning Sentinel and Kennebec Journal and board member of the Kennebec Historical Society. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login to participate in the conversation. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.
