For the first time in four seasons, Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey is not banking on its rankings to cross the NCAA Tournament threshold. At No. 12/13, the Bobcats are on the brink of clinching a spot in the Round of 16, essentially making the ECAC Tournament win-or-go-home as conference winners earn an auto-bid.
In recent years, Quinnipiac hasn’t needed to win the Whitelaw Cup in Lake Placid, New York, because of where it stood in the polls leading into the postseason. As much as winning the conference would have been another trophy for the case in their national championship season or last spring, the Bobcats didn’t need to.
Now, they do.
“We’re fighting for our lives for the NCAA tournament,” Pecknold said on Feb. 22 after a 4-0 victory over Brown. “So we had to win.”
As of publication, Quinnipiac could potentially earn an at-large bid if there are upsets in other conference tournaments and it performs well enough in the ECAC Tournament, but the chances are slim given its current rank.
The biggest problem Quinnipiac has dealt with in the 2024-25 campaign is its youth. Its roster turnover in the offseason brought in 12 new players to replace 14 star-studded skaters — 10 of which were national champions.
Pecknold has described this season several times as “chaos” — and he’s not wrong. Quinnipiac has a regular season record of 22-10-2 heading into the opening series of the tournament. It’s the No. 1 seed in the conference, but it hasn’t always played as such.
“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 on Nov. 8 following a 4-2 loss to Dartmouth.
The following week, the then 3-5 Bobcats were on the verge of falling out of the USCHO’s top 20 for the first time since 2017.
Unfortunately, that’s no longer just a jarring stat. That 3-5 start may be the very thing keeping Quinnipiac on the cusp of the tournament rather than having locked in a definitive slot.
Win one or two of those losses and the outlook is strikingly different.
This isn’t to say Quinnipiac hasn’t shown its prowess at all. But it has taken time.
According to Pecknold, his squad played one of their best periods of the season on Nov. 30 against Cornell in the Frozen Apple at Madison Square Garden. Ultimately, the Bobcats fell in a meaningless shootout, but that’s not the point.
At first, that matchup seemed like a turning point for the Bobcats. They were clicking on both sides of the ice and playing with similar speed to years prior. They weren’t taking atrocious penalties or giving up lazy turnovers.
The common theme surrounding men’s hockey has been maturity or lack thereof which makes them inconsistent. The Frozen Apple exemplified the beginning of growth — it just wasn’t sustainable.
“It’s just what we’re battling all year,” Pecknold said Nov. 30. “We’re inconsistent at times. You know, I thought we played three games tonight.”
For another prime example, look back at the CT Ice semifinals in late January at Sacred Heart.
Quinnipiac was the better team on the ice that day, despite being one or two spots behind UConn rankings-wise. But a penalty on freshman forward Tyler Borgula with 17 seconds remaining in a 1-1 game proved detrimental when the Huskies potted the winning goal 0.5 seconds before the buzzer.
“We want to make NCAA Tournament,” Pecknold said Jan. 24. “You know, we got to do it. It’s not a consolation game.”
There are two things to note here — Quinnipiac came from behind that evening, something it’s had to do for a better part of this season. Additionally, when it had the lead, it slowly crumbled in the final 20 minutes. In the past, the Bobcats have been a third period team.
They’d often emerge from the locker room with a completely different mindset — down or not — and put opponents to bed without a second thought.
Ten times during the 2022-23 season, Quinnipiac either came from behind after the first period of a game and ran away with the lead in the final frame or held on for the last 20 minutes of a one-goal contest.
The first half of this season was a 180.
After a horrendous 5-1 home loss to Northeastern on Jan. 4, Pecknold said playoffs were the “last thing I’m worried about.”
Now take a peek at a commanding weekend sweep in its last homestand (4-1 against Yale on Feb. 21 and 4-0 against Brown Feb. 22) of the regular season, and this team’s immaturity has come a long way.
“You always expect an adjustment period coming to a new place,” graduate student forward Jack Ricketts said on Feb. 22. “For some it’s a little longer and that’s the way it goes. I think just sort of the mentality in the second half to just keep pushing and focus on the little things.”
Ricketts was one of 10 Bobcats to contribute to that final score, whether it was with a goal of their own or an assist. In other words, the lines are jelling at the right time.
Defensively, things need to be cleaner. The Bobcats find themselves reverting to bad passes or giving up turnovers under pressure which inevitably leads to goals against. The blue line is even more crucial now with graduate student defenseman Aaron Bohlinger’s recent lower body injury.
The hope was its final series of the 2024-25 campaign — Clarkson (Feb. 28) and St. Lawrence (March 1) — reignited whatever flame brewed at MSG or against Yale and Brown.
Well, it did and it didn’t.
Quinnipiac went 1-1 on the road trip to upstate New York, upset by the Golden Knights 4-3 in overtime after clawing all the way back from a 2-0 deficit.
However, the loss wasn’t necessarily in vain. Pecknold proved pulling the goalie isn’t just a one-off attempt, it’s still effective. With nearly four minutes remaining in regulation, freshman goaltender Dylan Silverstein took to the bench and Quinnipiac knotted the matchup at three with an extra man.
And on March 1, it clinched its fifth Cleary Cup in a row with a dominant 4-0 shutout victory over St. Lawrence.
The Bobcats will most likely be one of the four teams to compete at Herb Brooks Arena in a couple of weeks for the conference title, assuming it advances past the quarterfinals.
“We’re not having the chat this year about the Lake Placid thing,” senior goaltender Noah Altman said Feb. 22. “We know what’s happened there in the past … there’s no reason to chat about it. Our season relies on those games, and we’re gonna give it everything we have and do exactly what we’ve been doing all year. Just build, build, build for this time.”
Quinnipiac hosts the bottom seed in the ECAC for a best two-out-of-three quarterfinal series March 14-16. Puck drop for Game 1 is set for 7 p.m.
