Following up an 18-4 record with a suitable encore is a daunting task. When the Clarkson University Hockey team returned to practice back in the fall of 1955, none of them seriously looked ahead to the upcoming season with the ambition of finishing with a perfect mark. However, the twenty-three young men would do just that, earning a place in college hockey annals as one of the only teams in the sport’s history to complete a season without a blemish upon its record.
Early in the 1950s, Clarkson established itself among the elite teams in the nation with its championship-caliber squads. Under the guidance of head coach Bill Harrison, the Golden Knights produced a record of 38-24-4 (.606 winning percentage) in the first four seasons of the decade before breaking out with an impressive 18-win campaign in the 1954-55 season. That team was one of the highest scoring squads in the history of hockey, producing 10 goals or more on eight occasions and six times besting the competition by double figures. While the 1954-55 team could score, it was bested by the opponent four times, including the two final games of the season. It wasn’t the way Clarkson had looked to end its successful season and the losses left a bad taste in the mouths of the Green and Gold skaters.
With the opening game of the 1955-56 season, Clarkson looked to return to its winning ways with a 4-1 win over the Ottawa Shamrocks, a modest start to the unassuming program. Just like the previous season when the Knights began the year with 10 straight victories before dropping a one-goal decision to St. Lawrence, Clarkson cruised through the opening portion of the schedule, winning three more home games against Michigan State, Montreal and Loyola before taking to the road for an overwhelming 12-3 win over Hamilton, a team that was beaten by just three goals the season prior. With another victory at home over Montegards, the Golden Knights took to the road in one of the most difficult challenges of the season, the Boston Tournament.
Though the Golden Knights always enjoyed some success against Harvard, Boston College and Boston University, the Beantown trio was a difficult match up for the Knights. In fact, Boston University had embarrassed the Knights 9-2 three years earlier. Clarkson came in with a 6-0 record and ea
sily ousted Harvard 11-5 with a six-goal opening period, the third straight contest in which the Knights produced 11 goals or more. The team had coasted through seven straight games with the closest opponent coming within three goals. However, the tables were about to turn on the Golden Knights.
On December 30, Boston College came out strong in game two of the Boston Tournament and led the Golden Knights 4-1 midway through the second period. Things looked bleak for the high-powered Clarkson offense as the team was shut down for the first half of the game. The Knights awoke from the Eagles trance and scored four times in just 5:30 to take a 5-4 lead in the second period, but the Eagles tallied twice in the third for a 6-5 advantage. Senior center Jack Porter came through with an unassisted goal with less than four minutes to play in regulation to tie the score 6-6 and then fed Eddie Rowe for the game-winner at 
5:12 of the extra session as the Knights came away with the victory over the Eagles. While the following game was hardly a shoo-in, the game was anti-climactic as the Knights polished off the tournament in style with a 10-5 drubbing of the Terriers of Boston University, coming away with three wins over Boston’s best.
A hangover of sorts came the next game when the Knights squeaked past Laval by just a single goal in Potsdam, but the team put its collective skates on straight in an 8-3 win over arch rival St. Lawrence. A ho-hum lopsided win over Yale followed to push the Knights to 12-0. Another close call came in Rochester, NY, against Queens College. The Knights were playing their second game in less than 18 hours and flew to Rochester and the plucky Queens squad tied the Knights 4-4 before Clarkson was awarded the victory via forfeit since the Queens team refused to play overtime. Easy home victories versus Middlebury and Boston University came next and an 8-0 win over Dartmouth in New Hampshire provided the Knights with their 16th win of the season, setting a new Clarkson standard for consecutive wins, besting a mark of 15 straight wins stretching from 1926 to 1928 when the team enjoyed consecutive seasons with only one loss in each.
The Green and Gold was hardly prepared to settle for a 16-game winning streak, pounding Middlebury 10-1 and Rensselaer 7-1. The Eagles of Boston College, who had taken the Knights to the brink of disaster earlier in the season, proved to be more fodder for the winning ways of Clarkson as the Knights won 5-2 in Potsdam late in the season. Another scare provided by Queens in Rochester was proven to be an aberration as the Knights dispatched the Canadian squad in Potsdam. Five-goal victories over Providence and Rensselaer lengthened Clarkson’s winning streak to 22 games and the team would end its regular season with a home showdown against its arch rival located 10 miles down the road, St. Lawrence University.
“I remember going to Canton,” Jack Porter recalled at his Clarkson Athletic Hall of Fame induction. “It was the final game of the season and they were the number two team in the east and we were the number one and had an undefeated season on the line. And we stomped them!” Porter remembered correctly his impressive final game, as he scored a hat trick and added two assists, making sure every one understood who the better team was in 1955-56. “Jack Porter was all over the ice, scoring, setting up plays, back checking, and along with (Tom) Meeker and (Ellard) Gutzman, held control throughout,” said coach Harrison in a post-game interview after the Knights skated by North Country rival St. Lawrence 7-4 to complete the season.
The Knights would be invited to the NCAA Championships, but the Clarkson hockey squad refused to attend the four-team tournament to decide the top team of the year. Clarkson had eight seniors who were four-year varsity players and, under the NCAA rules of the time, those players were ineligible. A vote among the members of the team echoed the unity and solidarity they had possessed all season, as the team concluded it would not go as an incomplete unit.
At the conclusion of the season, awards rolled in for the Golden Knights. Center
Eddie Rowe was named All-America as was defenseman Art Smith. The team was named Tri-State League Champions and coach Harrison became the first Clarkson coach to earn the Spencer R. Penrose Memorial Trophy as NCAA Division I Coach of the Year. Three members of the team, Ed Rowe, Jack Porter and goaltender Ed Macdonald, have since been enshrined in the Clarkson University Athletic Hall of Fame.
Rowe led the team in scoring with 65 points, scoring 27 goals and a team-leading 38 assists. First-year player Grant Childerhose scored 36 goals in 23 games and added 17 assists for 53 points. Tom Meeker added 47 points on 23 goals and 24 assists and Jack Porter totaled 16 goals and 29 assists for 45 points. Eight different players scored 10 goals or more and nine players tallied 20 points or more.
The 1955-56 Clarkson hockey team has stood the test of as one of only two teams in the history of the NCAA to record a flawless season of 20 games or more (only Cornell in 1969-70 has gone unbeaten and untied along with Clarkson). Had the NCAA allowed four-year players to participate in the tournament, the Knights certainly would have been favored to come away with the title as the two teams that represented the East that year were beaten by Clarkson handily on three of the four occasions the teams met.
“Fifty years later it’s still so vivid in my mind,” former goaltender Ed Macdonald said. “Of course the competitive situation is quite different today. I’m not sure an undefeated season is even possible with the high-level of competition.”
And that is what makes the 1955-56 season so special. The likelihood of another unbeaten, untied season is so remote now that it is important that the occurrences of the past are celebrated.
In addition to the historical impressions left on the NCAA, the team is not surprisingly renowned as the best team ever at Clarkson. The Knights outscored their opponents by 114 goals in 1955-56, the third best figure ever at Clarkson, regardless of games played. The 7.48 goals scored per contest that season has not been approached in the 50 seasons since. Eddie Rowe, Tom Meeker, Jack Porter, Grant Childerhose and Ellard Gutzman were among the elite scorers ever at Clarkson, all boasting records with more than 100 points tallied. The squad was the only team in the first 50 years of Clarkson hockey to have five 100-point scorers on the roster at one time. The figure has been matched and surpassed on numerous occasions since, but the feat shows just how high-powered the offense was for its time.
The 1955-56 Golden Knights were: Bert Barr, Bob Carr, Grant Childerhose, Don Cooper, Rudolph DeMichele, Ellard Gutzman, Earl King, Ed Macdonald, Don May, Tom Meeker, Louis Meomartino, Jack Porter, Art Quartermain, Eddie Rowe, Don Seale, Tom Sherby, Art Smith, Gilbert Tennant, Joe Thompson, Don Williamson, Doug Wilson, Al Young and captain Al Ziebarth. The team was coached by Bill Harrison and the trainer was Pinky Ryan.
