Photo Courtesy: Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Victoria Rutigliano
The contrast between the various blue and gold baseball caps littering the ground and the sparkling white from the ice was just an addition to the eruption of cheers coming from Bobcat fans as Quinnipiac celebrated Landon Smith’s second career hat trick against Dartmouth College on Friday night.
This hat trick was Smith’s second of his career, scoring all three of his goals in the third period to help Quinnipiac (6-3-1, 2-1-0 ECAC) hand Dartmouth (2-1-1, 1-1-1 ECAC) its first loss of the season in a 6-3 victory at High Point Solutions Arena.
After being one of the top goal-scorers for the Bobcats last season, notching 15 goals and 16 assists, Smith struggled in the beginning of the season to find his niche on offense with two line mates after Sam Anas and Travis St. Denis left the team at the end of last season.
Before Friday night’s game, Smith only tallied one goal all season, coming from his first in the second game of the season against Northeastern. Despite this, Smith said he didn’t feel any pressure going into this game to provide for his team on offense.
“I go into every game the same way that I would no matter what,” Smith said. “It’s just one of those things, sometimes they go in sometimes they don’t. They haven’t been bouncing for me lately but tonight they were.”
All three of Smith’s goals came within seven minutes of each other in the final period of the game, the final one coming on a power play. Tim Clifton, who netted his sixth goal of the season and 18th career power play goal, good for second overall in the NCAA, said the power play is something his team has been working to improve on since the season began.
“Well obviously we had a lot of trouble creating chances in the first couple games this season.” Clifton said. “Now I think we’re working harder, we’re becoming more crisp with our breakout passes. We’re getting better zone entries, and we’re just executing and getting pucks to the net, and crashing the net, and keeping it simple and pucks find a way to go in. Most of them are lucky, but we get lucky because we’re working hard.”
After heading into this game struggling on the man-advantage this season, going eight-for-67 through 11 games, this power play goal, and the two other the Bobcats scored in the matchup, helped curve the score in the Bobcats favor. Head coach Rand Pecknold ran three defensemen on his first power-play unit; something he said in the past few games has helped his team progress.
“If we feel it’s going to put us in the best situation to score a goal then that’s what we’re going to do,” Pecknold said. “We’ve been doing that for a while so this is a few games in, four or five games, so we have to get our best players on the ice.”
The game didn’t start out with Quinnipiac on top, though.
Dartmouth fans had something to cheer about just a minute after the puck dropped to start the game when Kevan Kilistoff deflected a shot from the to give the Big Green an early 1-0 lead.
Quinnipiac’s Karlis Cukste would even the scoring on a power play goal just a few minutes later, but it wasn’t a lead the Bobcats would keep. Four minutes later, Dartmouth’s John Ersting made Quinnipiac goaltender Chris Truehl pay for letting up a rebound in the crease, allowing Dartmouth to go back on the lead.
But it was all Quinnipiac in the second period, with the Bobcats taking 22 shots throughout the 20-minute frame.
A few minutes into the second period, Quinnipiac’s Tanner MacMaster was kneed hard in the neutral zone by Dartmouth’s Alex Jasiek and went down in pain, not returning to the game after getting help walking to the locker room.
Quinnipiac went on a five-minute major power play after Jasiek received a game misconduct and the Bobcats jumped out to a lead with Tim Clifton netting a power play goal on the man advantage.
Bo Pieper scored with just 1.8 seconds remaining into the second to give his team a 3-2 lead heading into intermission. Clifton said Pieper’s line playing to the buzzer demonstrates the level of commitment that group has on the ice.
“That’s just great awareness by their line. Not giving up on the play. They could have easily just backed off,” Clifton said. “But they didn’t and that’s a testament to their character. And that was a big goal in the game. I think that really changed the tides for us. So it was just a big moment in the game.”
From that goal Quinnipiac headed into the third period up 3-2 and Smith would take it from there scoring his second, third, and fourth goal of the season to help the Bobcats earn its second ECAC victory of the season.
Quinnipiac heads back out on the ice Saturday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m., hosting Harvard in another conference matchup.
