By: MJ Baird
“It’s a game of inches” Dartmouth head coach Bob Gaudet said after the game.
A game of inches on the ice, perhaps, but not on the score sheet. The Quinnipiac Bobcats defeated the Dartmouth Big Green in the ECAC semifinal game by a final score of 3-1. Quinnipiac (29-3-7, 17-1-5 ECAC) will make its second ECAC title game appearance in program history on Saturday, and will look to hoist its first ever Whitelaw Cup.
The No. 1 team in the conference proved too much for Dartmouth (18-17-1, 11-12-0 ECAC) to handle. It may not have seemed that way early on however, both teams needed time to settle in.
“I thought we came out really hard in the first five minutes,” Dartmouth forward Carl Hesler said. “They did a really good job of taking away our momentum.”
Not only did Quinnipiac take away the Dartmouth momentum, but transferred that to its own side. After a power play opportunity for the Bobcats on a Kevin Neiley tripping call, the pace of play ramped up.
“We had a great week of practice, I thought we were going to be awesome out of the gate but we were back on our heels” Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold said.
Another goal from defenseman Connor Clifton at the end of the first period sparked Quinnipiac. The goal put the Bobcats ahead in the game, where they would stay for the remainder.
“That was a big goal for us,” Pecknold said, “they are still kids and they get nervous at times. Our defense is very involved offensively, I think we are two or three in the country in terms of defensive production”
The goal was Clifton’s seventh of the year and first of the playoffs.
Quinnipiac dominated the first five minutes of the second period and manufactured two more tallies.
The first came off the stick of junior forward and conference point leader Sam Anas on the power play.
“Our assistant coach had a great idea to go for a high tip,” Anas said, “Timmy Clifton made an awesome play to shoot the puck through a guys stick and it ended up hitting my stick and went in.”
In only his 14th game of the season, Craig Martin found the score sheet. After Tanner MacMaster beat his defender wide, he threw the puck on Dartmouth goaltender Charles Grant and slid across the front of the slot. Martin crashed the crease, and found the puck sitting in the blue paint waiting to be tapped into the open net. Martin got his blade on the puck and slid it over the goal line for the tally. The goal was Martin’s first of his career, giving the Bobcats a three-goal cushion.
The third period brought more of the same for both sides, that was until the final five minutes. With just over five minutes remaining, Big Green defender, Connor Yau, scored to put them on the board. It was too little too late for Dartmouth, who continued to pressure Quinnipiac for the remaining five minutes but Michael Garteig and the Quinnipiac defense held strong with the Dartmouth net empty to advance to the finals.
Quinnipiac will await the winner of Harvard vs. Saint Lawrence to determine its opponent for Saturday.
Extras:
Olympic Ice:
The Herb Brooks Arena is an olympic sheet of ice. Meaning, the ice is larger than a standard playing surface that most college teams play on. For each team, that meant slight changes to the game plan.
“It’s a lot more skating, it takes a lot more out of you,” Hesler said. “On a couple of goals they (Quinnipiac) used their speed really well going wide.”
It was evident on both Connor Clifton’s goal as well as Tanner MacMaster’s play to set up the Craig Martin goal that the extra width on the ice allowed the Bobcat players to use their speed effectively.
“The side speed that Quinnipiac had on a couple of their goals was the advantage,” Gaudet said.
For the Bobcats, the Olympic rink had meaning too. In the defensive zone specifically, the forwards played low, close to the hash marks and sometimes lower.
“It’s always important to pick up sticks and know where guys are. That kind of hurt us against Cornell (last weekend) we were drifting a little so we focused on that” Anas said.
The Bobcats worked on their deep corner cycles and rink-wide passing in Friday’s morning skate to add emphasis.
Discipline:
Dartmouth took six penalties in the game compared to Quinnipiac’s two. Although the Bobcats only capitalized on one power play, the time with a man-down impacted the Big Green.
“I thought the penalties slowed us down a little bit obviously it took away our momentum” Hesler said.
Head Coach Bob Gaudet was visibly upset with some of the calls made in the game.
“I’ll watch the video of it,” Gaudet said, It’s hard to see from my vantage point.”
