Photo courtesy: Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Sierra Goodwill
The Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team (25-2-5, 15-2-4 ECAC) rolled past Union (0-27-6, 0-18-3 ECAC) Friday night, 9-0. Quinnipiac is now ECAC regular-season champions for the first time in program history, giving the Bobcats home ice advantage for the conference playoffs.
“Clearly this is a great day for our program and there’s no better finish to that game than having the seniors out there on the ice,” Quinnipiac head coach Cassandra Turner said.
The Bobcats went into this matchup with the same speed and intensity as always, despite facing a Union team that hasn’t won a single game all season.
“It’s really no shift for our team. We talk about always playing our best hockey, we talk about playing Quinnipiac hockey. They were very disciplined today in the game and that showed in every element of our play,” Turner said.
While there were many impressive aspects of Friday night’s showing, one name stood out in particular: T.T. Cianfarano.
In the thrashing, Cianfarano recorded an incredible four goals and one assist. Her standout performance gives her a total of 27 goals on the season, good enough to surpass all-time points leader Kelly Babstock’s sophomore year goal record.
“Without my teammates and us working hard it wouldn’t have happened, so I’m just excited to be a part of it,” Cianfarano said.
But Cianfarano wasn’t alone in the contributions, as teammate Nicole Connery posted two goals and an assist on the night.
“It’s just this feeling in your entire body that’s just like all in your skin and it’s in your veins and it’s from all the hard work. It’s such a great feeling as a senior especially because it’s your last year, you want to go out as hard as you can,” Connery said, “We’ve been working for it every day, every practice. I feel like it’s something we have earned as an entire group.”
While the official commendations for the senior class won’t be until tomorrow night against RPI, Quinnipiac made it a point to go out and play for the fourth year players.
“They’re a really neat group of people and champions. Every time we talk it’s just so neat to see the character and so neat to see how much they wanted this. The thing is, which I’m sure they’ll tell you, is they want more beyond this,” Turner said. “It’s incredibly special.”
Connery echoes her coach’s sentiments, and knows for know they can revel in the moment before the emotions can run high again.
“Right now Coach says we can celebrate for awhile. And then, once that’s kind of flushed out a little, we focus on the next game cause every game is important,” Connery said.
Even with the hardware, Cassie Turner is still not satisfied, and re-focusing on the team’s next game, keeping an eye on extremely tight ECAC standings and the fight for the eighth seed. Turner says she is interested to see how it all shapes out come conference tournament time, but for now she has narrow vision.
“They’re going to live in the moment tonight and celebrate this, cause it’s a huge accomplishment across the season, but when we come back tomorrow we are going to be ready to complete our next task,” Turner said.
