The Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team fell just short in a 2-1 loss to an ECAC Hockey opponent Cornell Friday night at TD Bank Sports Center. Despite having 41 shots on net, the Bobcats couldn’t find ways to capitalize on their opportunities.

“It’s not often you lose a game when you outshoot a team 41-14, but it happens so we’re certainly disappointed.” Quinnipiac Coach Rand Pecknold said.

Quinnipiac had its chances to tie the game late in the third period with a power play.

On a man advantage with 13:37 into the third period, a Devon Toews shot hit inside of the post that left Kellen Jones with an open net, only to see it go wide of the far post. Then, with under a minute to play, Sam Anas teased the crowd when he received a rebound and backhanded it off the side of the net.

“Yeah, shots are overrated,” Captain Cory Hibbeler said. “Iles is a good goaltender and we had a couple of opportunities there in the third and even before that when we missed the net. Against a goaltender like Iles, you got to capitalize on your chances and we didn’t do that tonight.”

Perhaps the game’s top performer had a lot to do with that. Cornell goaltender Andy Iles shut out the lights by stopping 40-of-41 shots.

“Well he’s the best player on the ice and he won the game for them,” Pecknold said.

The only goal surrendered by Iles was one that deflected off his own player’s skate.

With 7:06 left in the first period, Tommy Schutt scored his third goal of the year when he backhanded the puck off Iles. After going off of Iles’ left leg pad, the puck deflected off a Cornell defenseman’s skate to slide in the back of the net.

Cornell wasted little time to tie it up, when defenseman Joakim Ryan took a shot from the top of the circle to put it past goaltender Michael Garteig less than a minute later.

Hibbeler went on to talk about how the team needs to be more consistent in bringing mental toughness onto the ice.

“I think it’s something we’ve been struggling,” Hibbeler said. “We’ve had it some games and it’s just a little bit consistency for us, is probably the toughest part for us to bring it every game.”

The Bobcats were held to a scoreless second period, as they were only able to get one shot on net in their lone power play of the period.

Cornell broke the tie with 6:26 left in the second period when Brian Ferlin went top shelf on a breakaway to beat Garteig.

“Ultimately, we had some issues defensively at times,” Pecknold said. “When you give up 14 shots, you can’t give up breakaways.”

From there on out, Cornell’s main focus was to maintain Quinnipiac’s aggressive offense.

“They shoot the puck, obviously, from a lot of areas,” Cornell Coach Mike Schafer said. “One of the things we wanted to do was to keep it on the perimeter and I thought we did a pretty good job at that for a couple of periods.”

“It was a hard fought loss and obviously we’re not (happy) with it but time to start focusing on Colgate,” Hibbeler said.