Bobcats celebrate Senior Night, take down Brown 2-1
February 29, 2020
The Bobcats celebrated Senior Day in style with a 2-1 victory over Brown. Wyatt Bongiovanni and Ethan de Jong scored for the Bobcats, who honored Alex Whelan, Nick Jermain and Karlis Cukste before the game. With the win, the Bobcats clinched a first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey Playoffs.
Highlights (Tom Krosnowski):
Postgame Sound (Steven Pappas):
Flatley’s Focus (Patrick Flatley):
The Quinnipiac Men’s Ice Hockey team won a tight one against Brown. It wasn’t the most complete game the Bobcats have played but at this point in the season, a win is a win. There were a few aspects of Quinnipiac’s game that need to be cleaned up before the much-awaited Battle of Whitney Ave. taking place on Saturday night, and it all comes back to puck management.
Quinnipiac is at their best when they suffocate the opposing team. This is a main contributing factor that leads to the Bobcats being able to take down top teams, such as Cornell earlier this season.
Eliminating the time and space of the opponent is the Bobcats’ bread and butter and we saw that on display in the first period.
The play was largely held in Brown’s defensive end due to the high intensity forecheck form the blue and gold. Quinnipiac deviated from this in the second and third periods which allowed Brown to get back in the game, early in the second. It’s a problem that head coach Rand Pecknold has stressed heavily to his team.
“For the 60 (minutes), it wasn’t our best game. I thought we played hard, fairly committed.” Pecknold said.
The Bobcats will need that full 60-minute effort against Yale in the most anticipated game of the season.
Throughout the game, the Bobcats threw the puck around in many occasions, one leading to the game tying goal.
“I was a little disappointed in the goal we let up, kind of let Keith out to dry,” Pecknold said. “Made a 3-on-1 breakaway, we blew a backcheck on that which we’ve been talking a lot about lately so that was disappointing.”
Blindly throwing the puck as opposed to a tape-to-tape pass, leads to everyone getting out of position. In turn, a bad pass with players out of position leads to an odd man rush going the other way.
A domino effect that you try your best to avoid but it all comes back to one thing. Making good decisions with the puck. Taking the extra second to look up, look around and see the play developing is an aspect of the game the Bobcats are usually solid in, especially in big games.
Thankfully the next game for Quinnipiac is as big as the regular season gets. Yale is making the trip down Whitney Avenue and with that comes the rowdy, loud crowd that the Bobcats thrive off of in games like this.
If you are lucky enough to have a ticket, get there as early as you can Saturday night. You do not want to miss the Battle of Whitney Avenue.
