1919–20 Bates men's ice hockey season

After several years of informal teams being organized by students, Bates decided to support a varsity ice hockey team for the first time. Because the school delayed the decision, the team had only a short time to arrange a schedule and ended up playing Bowdoin in four of their seven games.[1] In spite of the hasty arrangement, Bates played a local aggregation first and won their opening match 3–0.[2] Bates then tortured Bowdoin with a pair of dominant performances. After Sauvage netted a hat-trick in the first meeting, Provost posted 6 goals in the rematch.[3] In between those matches, the team suffered its first loss of the year in overtime. The first road game for the team was a fast match that needed three separate 5-minute overtimes to decide but a shot that deflected off of captain Burns' stick past Wiggin doomed the garnet skaters.

The rematch with Portland went about as well as the first while an amateur team from Canada, called the Nibrocks of La Tuque, arrived in early February and handed the team another loss. While Bates was able to keep up with the foreigners in the game, the lack of teamwork allowed the Canadians to block any offense the team managed to put together.[4] Bates then ended its season by splitting a pair of games with Bowdoin during the winter carnival. The score of the each match was 1–0 with Bates taking the first before seeing the Bears finally win one of their own. Poor ice conditions slowed the games down

Note: Bates did not adopt the 'Bobcats' moniker until 1924.