Photo courtesy: QBSN
The No. 11 Quinnipiac University men’s ice hockey team defeated Union 4-3 Friday in a nail-biting, triple overtime showdown. With this win, the Bobcats take the first victory in the quarterfinal round of the ECAC playoffs.
After 106 minutes of play, Alex Barron came out of the penalty box for a hooking call, skated down to the offensive zone where he redirected a shot by Dan Federico to net the winning goal for the Bobcats to end the third overtime period.
“That’s a gutsy win tonight,” head coach Rand Pecknold said. “That’s one of the better ones in my career here – my 21 years at Quinnipiac in terms of two extra attacker goals, going through the overtimes and the excitement.”
With less than 90 seconds left in regulation, the Dutchmen were ahead of the Bobcats 3-1. Fans had already started exiting the arena, expecting a loss.
Quinnipiac pulled goaltender Michael Garteig to allow for an extra attacker. Justin Agosta passed the puck from the point across the ice to Sam Anas who was standing alone in front of the corner of the net. With one minute and 26 seconds left, the Bobcats were now down 3-2.
“The first [goal] was just an awesome pass from Justin Agosta,” Anas said. “He fooled their whole team, he fooled me at first, I wasn’t really expecting it and I just saw the open net and I slid it in.”
As soon as the puck dropped following the goal, Garteig was again pulled to give the team a helper in front. Union was called for too many men on the ice with less than a minute left which gave Quinnipiac a six-on-four player advantage in the offensive zone.
In a similar fashion to the goal 50 seconds prior, Anas received a pass from a defenseman on the opposite side of the offensive zone and roofed the puck to tie the game up 3-3.
Anas’ second goal was off an assist from Matthew Peca, giving Peca the 100th assist of his career.
Union came ahead early in the beginning of the game, scoring two goals six minutes apart in the first period. The Dutchmen ended the first period only having nine shots on net, but the team outplayed the Bobcats throughout the first period and into the second.
“I think the slow start was our immaturity as a team,” Pecknold said. “We’re a young hockey team, we have 18 freshmen and sophomores and we were immature tonight to start the hockey game.”
The Bobcats didn’t start to pick up momentum until the third period, where they outshot Union 11-5. The overtime periods would show a similar offensive dominance by Quinnipiac, where in the three overtime periods it had 22 shots to Union’s 10.
This loss by the Dutchmen was the first defeat in 10 playoff games dating back to last year.
The teams will faceoff again on Saturday, March 14 for the second game of their best-of-three series in the ECAC quarterfinals.
Updated with video report
