By: MJ Baird
The fourth ranked Quinnipiac Bobcats came into Saturday night’s game against the Dartmouth Big Green undefeated. The Bobcats walked out of the rink Saturday night still undefeated.
Quinnipiac (10-0-0, 4-0-0 ECAC) played sixty minutes of hard, gritty hockey.
Meanwhile, Dartmouth (2-4-0, 2-4-0 ECAC) held up its end of the bargain when it came to physical play as well.
The Bobcats won the game 6-2, but could have easily found themselves down a goal early in the game.
“We got a nice break early in the game when Alex Barron blocked the shot in front of the empty net. If that goes in we are down 30 seconds in, it’s a different hockey game. To me, that was the biggest play of the game,” Coach Rand Pecknold said postgame.
Goaltender Michael Garteig was sprawled out and could not get to the rebound, but Miner-Barron was there to slide into the crease and make the save.
The Bobcats came out of the first period leading 3-1 on goals from Scott Davidson, K.J. Tiefenwerth, and Tommy Schuttt. Carl Hesler scored his first goal of the season for the Big Green.
Coming out for the second period was a different story. Dartmouth scored a power play goal just five minutes into the period off the stick of Corey Kalk.
The physical aspect of tonight’s game was present throughout.
“It was a chippy game, things escalated a little bit” Pecknold said.
Brett Patterson received a game misconduct penalty at the beginning of the second period, sending him off the ice for the remainder of the game. Again at the end of the third period, Dartmouth’s River Rymsha and Quinnipiac’s Scott Davidson received minor penalties as well as misconducts, ending their nights early.
“We don’t run around and kill people but we wanna make sure we finish our checks, get a good bump so that player can’t get back in play. We are a better team when we are physical,” Pecknold said.
“I think the physicality for the most part favors. We like to play an in your face game where we take away time and space,” senior captain Soren Jonzzon said after the game.
On the major penalty to Patterson, the Bobcats tallied two power play goals. One came from Tim Clifton with 28 seconds left in the second period, and one from Sam Anas 30 seconds into the third period.
Tim Clifton scored his seventh goal in just six games for the Bobcats, after missing a small amount of time for an undisclosed absence. This extends his goal-scoring streak to six games, at least one in each game he has played in this season.
Clifton improved immensely from last season, working a lot on his skating over the offseason with the teams strength and conditioning and power skating coaches.
Tim’s brother Connor added an empty netter with less than two minutes left in regulation for the Bobcats.
Sitting at 10-0-0, the Bobcats are not taking their foot off the gas pedal.
“We continue to talk about points in our game where we can get better. One of the points of emphasis that we have is that we haven’t played ten-on-ten hockey, there is plenty of areas where we need to improve,” said Jonzzon.
“We got four points. Two wins and four points and we got to get ready for UConn,” Pecknold said on the weekend as a whole.
The Bobcats travel north to Storrs, Conn. Tuesday night for a non-conference matchup with the Huskies.
