HAMDEN — Head coach Rand Pecknold likes to use the word “buy-in” when it comes to his team’s identity.
But after Friday night’s home opener 4-4 tie with the UMaine Black Bears a different word comes into mind.
Resilience.
“We started the game not as good as we wanted, but we came back,” freshman forward Ethan Wyttenbach said. “It’s huge. We’re just continuing to build slowly.”
It was almost a win. But it was also almost a loss.
The Bobcats struggled in the first period to do basically anything. Sloppy passing with disorganized communication are not how you score goals and the Bobcats were the prime example of that.
“Sloppy, lack of buy-in,” Pecknold said. “Really disappointing.”
The Black Bears opened up the score early in the first period, freshman forward Will Gerrior shooting one past junior goaltender Matej Marinov three minutes into the game.
On paper, the Nitra, Slovakia native had a pretty bad game. He allowed four goals, saving 18 shots and some of his saves could only be considered pure luck.
But a goal isn’t just the goalie’s fault, even though it might sound ironic. A goalie can only do so much when there is virtually no defense in front of him.
“He found a way and he gritted it out,” Pecknold said. “I thought we hung him out to dry on really all four goals. We really need to play better in front of him.”
The game seemed like a no-brain win for UMaine at the end of first as the Bobcats were trailing 0-3. The crowd — dutifully dressed in white and standing the whole game as @QUBarstool asked of them — died down.
But clearly Pecknold lit a fire under his players in those 15 minutes between the periods, because the Bobcats came out of that locker room swinging.
“Literally two words — buy in,” Pecknold said. “We know what our identity is, we strayed a lot in the first period. They wanna try to do too much. We gotta make plays, which you know we will.”
Wyttenbach netted Quinnipiac’s first goal of the game right out of the gate. Quite literary, it was 14 seconds into the period.
For a second it looked like Quinnipiac could crawl from the deep hole it dug itself. But after junior forward Andon Cerbone lost the puck after being slammed against the boards, a UMaine breakaway allowed its senior forward Thomas Freel to shoot one past Marinov.
1-4 on the jumbotron. A three goal difference isn’t ending in hockey but it sure is demoralizing.
Four minutes after that a pass from Cerbone finds freshman center Markus Vidicek who is alone in front of the net and who shoots one past UMaine’s junior goaltender Albin Boija.
And the morale shifted.
Suddenly the passes connected. The shots-on-goal ratio switched towards the Bobcats’ side. They continued the momentum into the third period and more and more shots were inching closer to that red line behind Boija.
“We scored four goals on maybe the best goalie in the country,” Pecknold said. “We can score goals, but our details were terrible in the first period. We’re gonna grow as a team.”
It wasn’t until less than three minutes before the end of the game, after almost everyone in the crowd made peace with the loss in the home opener, that sophomore defender Elliott Groenewold found the back of the net.
There it was. That one goal difference with a little over two minutes left on the clock. And Pecknold did his trick that seems to be working for him exactly when it needs to be — he pulled Marinov out of the net.
Six-on-five play. The Bobcats are piling around UMaine’s net, bodies and sticks everywhere.
Somehow senior forward Jeremy Wilmer is at the right angle in the left circle. His shot makes it past Boija and the student section blows off the roof in the M&T Bank Arena.
“I thought it was a great atmosphere, the crowd was rocking, it was fun to have the rink rolling like that,” Pecknold said.
All tied at 4-4 with 1:50 left on the clock.
And some real college hockey started to show.
The Bobcats wanted that home opener win, and most likely if it was anyone else in UMaine’s net that victory would’ve come at the end of that period.
But it didn’t. And the game went into overtime.
Quinnipiac recorded three shots in those five minutes, all blocked by Boija.
Seven seconds before the buzzer sounded, freshman forward Antonin Verreault grabbed the puck and started sprinting towards Boija. His shot was stopped by Boija once again a second before the overtime ended.
“We battled,” Pecknold said. “This is the short term, long-term we need to get better as a hockey team.”
So on paper, this game ended in a 4-4 tie.
However, the Bobcats and the Black Bears ended this game unofficially in a shoot-out, where Marinov stopped every single attempt from UMaine, and Wyttenbach’s shot made it just past Boija, giving Quinnipiac at least a taste of a home win.
“I was kinda blacked out by the end,” Wyttenbach said. “It was a really cool moment, something I won’t forget.”
Quinnipiac will return on home ice tomorrow to once again face UMaine. Puck drop is set for 4 p.m.
