The 1922–23 Middlebury Panthers men's ice hockey season was the inaugural season of play for the program.
Increased interest by the student body caused Middlebury College to recognize ice hockey as a minor sport this season.[1] The first game was swiftly arranged with Rensselaer and the team began to work on the temporary rink that had been built atop the tennis courts. The general lack of experience both with the game and with one another left the players handicapped in their opening match but the team still performed well. Middlebury limited the Engineers to just three goals and played aggressively despite their newness to the game.[2]
Due to their late start, the team wasn't able to schedule another game for almost a month. However, The time in between games did give the Panthers a change to fine tune their game. When they finally travelled to play Saint Michael's, Middlebury looked far more composed and played the Purple Knights evenly all game. The offense had no ability to penetrate the St. Mike's defense and were restricted to long shots that missed more often than not. Fortunetely, the Panthers' defense was just as effective and neither team was able to score in regulation. During the overtime, a rink-length rush from Papineau resulted in the only goal of the game and gave Middlebury its second loss.[3] The rematch wasn't long in coming as the two were set to play during Middlebury's Winter Carnival on the 22nd. Ross opened the scoring with the first goal in the program's history and had his team in the lead by the midway point of the game. Saint Michael's rallied with two goals in the second half to take the match but that didn't stop the first home game for the Panthers being a huge and popular success.[4]
Erwin Drost served as team manager and head coach.
|-!colspan=12 style=";" | Regular Season[6]