Photo Courtesy: Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Kyle Levasseur
BOSTON, Mass. – For the past five seasons, Quinnipiac’s bread and butter has been it’s power play. The Bobcats have lead NCAA hockey in power play percentage over that time (24.8%). However, the usually dominant power play was nowhere to be seen Saturday night, going 0-12, resulting in a 0-3 loss against Boston University. The Bobcats now drop to 4-2-1 on the season, while the Terriers improve to 3-2.
Quinnipiac head coach, Rand Pecknold, was disappointed in his team’s power play.
“It’s a work in progress. We got cleaned out really. We lost a lot of really good players, and we’re trying to figure it out right now. Our power play struggled tonight.”
On the flip side, Boston University’s penalty kill has been excellent all season, owning a 95.3% penalty kill rate. Terriers goalie Jake Oettinger stopped 22 shots and according to Pecknold he was, “The best player on the ice.”
Boston University head coach, David Quinn, is now 2-0 against Pecknold. He felt his team’s penalty kill was the difference maker in the game.
“I mean Jake (Oettinger) played really well tonight, I’m not trying to take anything away from him, but for a team that had to kill twelve penalties…without our conditioning I don’t know if we would have been able to win that one tonight…we’ve been stressing on it all year because I thought last year we didn’t have a great penalty kill, and I take a lot of responsibility for that, because looking back I thought we could have practiced it better…You better practice them and you better be ready, because it’s going to really influence the game.”
Quinn’s squad came off a weekend in which it got swept by Denver, and dropped from second in the nation to eigth in the uscho.com poll.
“We didn’t feel very good about ourselves after we left Denver, and one of the things that I know they felt was, we need to be better than that…we were a team that competed but we weren’t hard enough to play against. Boy were we a lot harder to play against this weekend,” Quinn said.
The Terriers built a lead just over six minutes into the first period and they never looked back. Minnesota Wild prospect, Jordan Greenway, lifted a backhander above Quinnipiac goalie, Andrew Shortridge’s left shoulder for the first goal of the night.
After only scoring five goals last year, which Quinn said, “Was not going to cut it,” Greenway spent a lot of time over the summer improving his offensive side of the game.
“Yea I had a really good summer,” Greenway said. “I was here for most of it, just in the gym a lot…Last year I only had five goals, and this year I already have three.”
Sophomore Bobo Carpenter added a much needed insurance goal for Boston University, just under eight minutes into the second period. Terriers point leader, Patrick Harper (8), had the assist on a 2 on 1 breakaway.
The Terriers would add an empty net goal in the last minute of play, but Pecknold commented on Shortridge’s game saying, “I thought he looked good. I thought he settled in…the second goal, it’s a 2 on 1 backdoor goal, you can’t hold him for that. The first goal, I have to watch it again, I’m not sure exactly what happened with it.”
While junior Chris Truehl was in net for the Bobcats, during Wednesday’s 5-2 win over UCONN, he was on the bench tonight. Pecknold explained his decision on whom to start.
“I came off of last weekend, and my feeling was to split them this week. So I know it was Wednesday and Saturday, but I just felt like each one of them should get in a game in the non-conference schedule and they’ve both earned it. It could have gone the other way, it could have been Shortridge then Truehl.”
This is Quinnipiac’s first shutout loss since March 28, 2014 against Providence College. Pecknold described his team’s play as, “We played frustrated, and you can’t score goals when you’re frustrated.”
Quinnipiac’s next game is home at 7 pm against UMASS, it’s last out of conference game. Pecknold and company begin ECAC play on November 4, at Clarkson.
