Photo courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Kyle Levasseur
After only losing one ECAC regular season game in the last two seasons at High Point Solutions Arena, the Quinnipiac Bobcats have now lost their fourth this year, falling to the Clarkson Golden Knights 4-2 Friday night.
With a chance to surpass Cornell at fourth in the conference, a lackluster second period resulted in Quinnipiac’s demise.
“I thought we played three games tonight,” said Quinnipiac head coach, Rand Pecknold. “I thought the first period was really good. The second period was unacceptable. The third period was good from a compete level.”
In the second period, both players on Clarkson’s third defensive unit, Aaron Thow and Greg Moro, scored their second goals of the season. Despite Clarkson’s A.J. Fossen receiving a five minute major and game misconduct for hitting from behind, Quinnipiac was still outshot 6-9 in the second frame.
“That second period we had a lot of kids losing battles, losing races, a couple kids that were really soft and afraid to get hit, and you can’t play that way,” said Pecknold.
A bright spot for the Bobcats was Chase Priskie. It’s rare to find a defenseman that leads a team in points yet, when a defenseman has been as red-hot as Priskie has, it’s not that surprising.
Priskie continued his torrid play Friday night, notching his 23rd point of the season with a goal in the first period. Priskie now has five goals and four assists in his last seven games.
“I think this year I’ve just been doing a better job of getting pucks on net, and they’ve been finding the back of the net, and we’ve got a very good net front presence,” said Priskie.
Priskie, who is tied for the lead in power play goals among ECAC defenseman with five, thinks the five minute major was the turning point in the game.
“We get the five minute power play and you don’t capitalize,” said Priskie. “It’s a big momentum swing when a team can kill five whole minutes, and that’s what they did and they just kept feeding off that momentum, and ever since then we never really could catch our breath.”
Pecknold said that Clarkson’s freshman goalie, Jake Kielly was the best player on the ice saving 33 of 35 shots.
“I think we make goalies hot. We just struggle to finish,” said Pecknold. “It’ll come. We’re working hard at it, and we’ve got some goal scorers in that room (the locker room), it’s just a little bit of a slump in there.”
As Clarkson’s A.J. Fossen headed to the locker room for his game misconduct, Quinnipiac freshman goalie, Andrew Shortridge was not pleased with Fossen’s hitting from behind on Priskie.
Shortridge skated over to Fossen and expressed his displeasure of the hit by getting right in his face. High Point Solutions Arena erupted in noise with Quinnipiac fans screaming at Fossen as he left through the tunnel.
“We always stick up for each other no matter what,” said Shortridge. “We’re always there, we’re always battling for each other.”
The Bobcats are going to need to battle for each other in the next two weekends as it travels to face Union and Rensselear next weekend, and finishes it’s regular season at home against Yale and Brown. Quinnipiac (16-12-2, 10-7-1 ECAC) sits at fifth in the conference, just one point behind Cornell (15-6-2, 10-4-2 ECAC) for a first round bye in the ECAC playoffs.
