As of publication, Quinnipiac men’s hockey sits No. 10 in the ECAC and dropped to No. 19 in the USCHO National Poll, the closest it’s been to being unranked since dipping under the top 20 in 2017.
Yet it was just 19 months ago that head coach Rand Pecknold achieved his magnum opus and manned his squad to its first national championship.
Not to mention the Bobcats entered the 2024-25 slate at No. 7 in the country.
So, what’s happened in the last month that this program now sits below .500 just eight games in?
Fourteen new players, that’s what.
“We’ve got so many kids that have habits from the teams they came from, and we play differently than pretty much every team they came from, so we have to kind of establish those habits and create them,” Pecknold said on Oct. 6.
Quinnipiac is flush with talent — bringing in several Hockey East transfers, a pair of Bruins draft picks and a freshman goaltender who oozes potential. Additionally, it returned several standouts from last season’s roster that came inches away from a second consecutive Frozen Four.
But there’s a spark missing in this team, a lack of motivation. The Bobcats don’t take hard hits, instead they take bad penalties. They rack up eight goals against UNH on Oct. 24, they drop consecutive ECAC matchups to start conference play two weeks later.
“We hadn’t lost to Dartmouth in 14 years at home until last night (Nov. 8),” Pecknold said Nov. 9 after being shut out 3-0 to Harvard. “We haven’t lost to Harvard for a while at home either. So, that’s something we’re gonna face.”
That’s the story Quinnipiac’s been writing thus far. It’s chaos, it’s a process, it lacks the buy-in that makes this program so well-renowned across the NCAA.
Quinnipiac’s biggest pitfall is its inability to generate offense, which then affects its performance behind the blue line. The Bobcats are digging their own grave in the form of poor mechanics. A misplaced pass in the neutral zone becomes a turnover turned goal for the opposing team, a scoring opportunity gets foiled because Quinnipiac can’t execute that last connection.
“We continue to shoot ourselves in the foot with things that we do continually that we talk about that we’re not supposed to do,” Pecknold said Nov. 8.
Look, this isn’t to say that there isn’t hope for this Quinnipiac team. In the last two decades, it’s been a high-contending program, and in the grand scheme, it still is. This skid is out of character for the Bobcats, but it shouldn’t define what’s already been built.
There are still plenty of standouts in the navy and gold, just watch for them. Junior wing Jeremy Wilmer and sophomore wing Mason Marcellus lead the pack with 10 and seven points, respectively. In that No. 3 slot is freshman standout, wing Tyler Borgula who is the team’s No. 1 goal-scorer (five) right now.
Remember that aforementioned freshman goaltender, Dylan Silverstein? In time, he’ll play a crucial role in Quinnipiac’s future, already posting impressive numbers with a .922 save percentage and shutout through five games.
“He’s been solid,” Pecknold said of the Calabasas, Californian who earned his first back-to-back starts against UNH (Oct. 24-25). “He took a long time off of hockey for injuries and he’s coming back now and he’s a huge talent.”
Here’s the bottom line for those in panic mode: It’s not all bad in Hamden, it’s just not so good.
