Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey wins game one of ECAC Tournament
HAMDEN, Conn. (BVM) — It was a revenge win for the top-seeded Bobcats on Friday night. In the best-of-three Men’s Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC) Hockey Tournament Quarterfinals, the Bobcats defeated eighth-seed, St. Lawrence Saints in game one.
Following last year’s overtime loss to St. Lawrence in the ECAC Tournament Championship round, Quinnipiac (29-5-3) continued the regular-season success against the Saints—where they posted 8-0 and 3-1 victories. In the opening round, at the People’s United Center on Friday night, Quinnipiac won 4-1.
While St. Lawrence defeated Brown University in a three-game first-round series from March 4-6, Quinnipiac hadn’t played since Feb. 26 thanks to their first-round bye.
“They just played playoff games, so they got all the nerves out a little bit,” said Quinnipiac head hockey coach Rand Pecknold. “But they got to travel. They played three [games] in three days.”
Despite the rust, Quinnipiac controlled play throughout most of the game, outshooting their opponent 27-21 and winning the faceoff battle 44-18.
“We weren’t perfect. We were a little sluggish to start the game,” Pecknold said. “We played hard for 60 [minutes]. It wasn’t our best 60 but we had some really good spurts. We just got to try to be a little more consistent with our effort tomorrow night. You got to give St. Lawrence credit, they competed hard and they were in the game for sure.”
Quinnipiac defenseman, Griffin Mendel, opened the scoring at 4:36 in the first period on a 2-on-0 breakaway. He scored the final goal as well—an empty-netter at 17:16 of the third period to seal the game and put the goalie back in the crease for good.
“I usually don’t get many points, so it’s always nice putting them up on the board,” Medel said. “I think we’re pretty confident after the game. We got the win and now it’s time to do a recovery and try to end their season over there.”
Winger Ty Smilanic scored Quinnipiac’s second goal at 5:29 in the second period on a designed play immediately following a faceoff. Center Desi Burgart won the draw straight back to Smilanic, who quickly fired a wrist shot past the goaltender before anyone could even get out of the faceoff circle.
“My line doesn’t run that play too often,” Smilanic said. “Desi was like, ‘Hey let’s let’s do DI,’ that’s the name of the play. He won it perfectly and we score off it, so I think we’re going to do that play a little more often.”
Smilanic’s goal was his first since Feb. 11, also against St. Lawrence.
“I’ve been struggling, it’s pretty obvious,” said Smilanic who was a 3rd round pick by the Florida Panthers in 2020. “I think at times when the team was struggling it was beating on me emotionally physically that I wasn’t helping the team. I kind of went into the mindset of the playoffs is a fresh start. To get one tonight I think should help my confidence the rest of the way.”
The third goal was scored on a redirect by Michael Lombardi following a Zach Metsa slap shot at 19:29 in the second period. The score was 3-0 and Quinnipiac led 19-12 on shots, but that was the end of their dominance, as St. Lawrence played well in the third period, outshooting Quinnipiac 8-7 and scoring their first goal at 10:07 by Jordan Steinmetz. However, it was too little too late.
“When they scored, we tried to keep the bench calm and not let any panic creep into our game. I thought we handled it pretty well after that goal,” Mendel said. “You can’t be afraid to lose. You just got to keep playing the same way. You just got to play confident and not be afraid to make plays, because when you start doing bad that’s when it starts to hurt you. You just gotta keep on being confident.”
Quinnipiac and St. Lawrence face off for game two of their quarterfinals series at the People’s United Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 12. Game three, if necessary, will be at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 13.
