By: M.J. Baird
The Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team opens ECAC play at home on Friday hosting the Cornell Big Red.
A season ago, the Bobcats and the Big Red split the regular season series, with each team winning on their respective home rinks. As for the all-time series, a similar trend holds true.
Cornell owns the slight advantage, holding a 18-16-3 record against Quinnipiac.
Coming into the first weekend of conference play, there certainly a few things to note for both sides.
Quinnipiac’s weekend off
The Bobcats enjoyed last weekend off, their first of the season and last until mid December. With no specific team to prepare for, Rand Pecknold had the freedom to work solely on his team and its systems.
“It was a good week of practice,” Pecknold said. “The guys worked hard, the compete level was excellent. Thursday and Saturday were probably our two best practices of the year.”
And his players echoed the same message.
“We put in a lot of work as we had some time to work on some stuff that we might not have game weeks,” sophomore defenseman Karlis Cukste said. “We worked on 2-on-2 stuff and battle drills, so we should be able to out-compete (Cornell) and that is what we are trying to do.”
Quinnipiac-Cornell rivalry
Big Red senior captain Trevor Yates has faced Quinnipiac a total of nine times, with Friday’s contest marking the 10th. The Bobcats have shut him and his team down pretty well, considering Cornell’s 2-6-1 record in the past three years (including a playoff series in Hamden) and Yates’ one goal scored in that span.
However that didn’t stop him from voicing his disdain for Quinnipiac.
“We don’t like them very much, so it adds a little more excitement to the game,” Yates told the Cornell Daily Sun earlier this week. “It’s one of those teams you go in and you know it’s going to be one of the hardest, if not the hardest, games of the year.”
Though the Bobcats didn’t necessarily voice the same demeanor, they certainly see the Big Red as a big conference matchup every year.
“Cornell is a really good hockey team and they execute well,” Pecknold said. “They have good size, good special teams. They do a really good job blocking shots. So we have to find a way to shoot quickly and get in there and force some rebounds.”
To put Cornell’s shot blocking skills in perspective, two of the last three years it has been in a top five team in Fenwick advanced statistics.
Fenwick stats track the unblocked shot attempts that a team achieves itself and allows to opponents. In 2014-15 and 2016-17, the Big Red have been amongst the lowest in the nation in unblocked shot attempts allowed.
And already this season, though a very small sample size, Cornell is ranked third in the same category.
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Friday nights contest is the first ECAC game for both sides, so someone’s “undefeated in conference” hopes will be quickly squashed.
Puck drop is slated for 7 p.m. at the TD Bank Sports Center.
