Photo courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By: M.J. Baird
The first two-game home stand of the Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey season ended Saturday night when the Bobcats defeated the Northeastern Huskies 5-2.
The matchup was a battle of two top-15 teams in the USCHO rankings, who played to a tie on Friday night. Coming into the weekend, Quinnipiac (1-0-1, 0-0 ECAC) was ranked No. 2 overall and Northeastern (0-1-1) was ranked No. 15.
Quinnipiac picked up its first regular season win of the season, but blocked shots and special teams were the story of the game.
Quinnipiac recorded 24 blocked shots in the game, its highest total on the young season.
“I thought our shot blocking was phenomenal,” head coach Rand Pecknold said after the game. “The commitment to that was excellent…that 3-on-5…it was pretty impressive.”
In addition to the 3-on-5 that Pecknold talked about, the Bobcats found themselves a man down 10 times in the game. Quinnipiac successfully killed nine of the 10 penalties, but Northeastern scored its only power-play goal in the third period off the stick of Zach Aston-Reese. The officials reviewed the play for danger of being played with a high stick, but later confirmed the goal.
The shot blocking Pecknold referenced did pay off, however, when Northeastern tried to force a d-to-d pass through traffic to avoid yet another blocked shot. Chase Priskie intercepted the risky pass and scored on a breakaway to extend the Quinnipiac lead to 4-1 in the third period.
Tim Clifton said the shot blocking was just another positive characteristic in the Quinnipiac style of hockey.
“When you have a group of guys who want to win they will do anything for the greater good of the team and tonight is a perfect example of the boys selling themselves for the win,” he said.
As for the power play, Quinnipiac capitalized on two of its eight chances. A Tim Clifton goal in what he called basically “chaos” in front of the net in the second period, and Chase Priskie’s breakaway goal in the third were the only points the Bobcats tallied on the man-advantage.
Rand Pecknold thought there was a distinct difference in his teams two power play units in the game.
“I thought the Aldworth unit was really good tonight. We still got some work to do with the Clifton unit bearing down a little bit,” he said.
The Bobcats and the Huskies combined for 24 penalties totaling 48 minutes. The reason for so many calls can be attributed to new trends in the way referee’s officiate the game.
“The phrase that the referee’s are using is that they are ‘reclaiming the rulebook’,” Pecknold said. “We have been told that, we certainly saw it tonight, and we need to adapt and figure it out.”
Landon Smith got the scoring started for the Bobcats midway through the first period. A penalty to Tanner MacMaster expired and Smith hurdled over the boards onto the ice, picking up a loose puck in the neutral zone. With a plethora of options on a three-on-one attack, Smith caught Huskies goaltender Ryan Ruck off guard firing from the top of the circle and found twine.
Just over three minutes later San Jose Sharks prospect and freshman Karlis Cukste netted his first collegiate goal, extending Quinnipiac’s lead to two.
The one word the Latvian had to describe it? “Awesome.”
Tim Clifton added an empty net goal in the waning seconds of the game to close out the game.
Adam Gaudette notched the first goal of the game for Northeastern in the second period. He slammed home a loose puck in the slot on a shot Chris Truehl thought he had covered.
Truehl allowed only two goals on 32 shots on the night, earning his first win of the season and first in his career as a Bobcat.
“I thought we battled a lot harder tonight than we did last night. I thought we cleaned some things up. We’re still not perfect, its game two of the year, but we’ll get better,” Pecknold said.
Quinnipiac has the opportunity to do just that next weekend on the road in Orono, Maine for a pair of games against the University of Maine Black Bears.
