As it has for much of the season, Quinnipiac outshot its opponent in Friday’s 3-1 win against Colgate in the opening game of the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals at the Herb Brooks Arena.
But the numbers don’t always tell the whole story.
The Bobcats outshot the Raiders 33-26 in Friday’s game, although No. 5 Colgate hit three posts and had several other bounces that didn’t go its way, ending its season and sending top-seeded Quinnipiac to the league championship.
It’s the first time since the Bobcats made the league title game in a full conference tournament since 2016, when the Bobcats beat Harvard 4-1. QU lost to St. Lawrence in last year’s abbreviated league season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Colgate’s loss was a tough end to what had been a hot stretch for the Raiders, who entered the night with only three regulation losses in their last 15 games.
“The game plan played out the way we wanted,” Colgate coach Don Vaughan said. “It didn’t bounce for us tonight and that’s the game, really. You’d like to think if one of those bounced the other way and went [in] but it didn’t happen tonight. We judge our team and our play on the effort and sticking to our structure and we’ve done that for the last six weeks.”
Playing without leading scorer Colton Young, who was injured in the semifinals last weekend against Cornell, Colgate had several good chances in the first, including a shot by Alex Young that hit the post 4:16 in and a partial short-handed breakaway later in the period.
But Quinnipiac took a 1-0 lead on Joey Cipollone’s power-play goal at 9:23 in the first and then doubled that lead when Michael Lombardi redirected TJ Friedmann’s shot from the slot past Mitch Benson (30 saves) at 16:43.
Despite trailing early, Colgate kept it close and cut Quinnipiac’s lead to 2-1 in the second period on Griffin Lunn’s goal at 4:23.
“I think a big part of that is patience, especially in the ECAC,” Raiders captain Josh McKechney said of Colgate keeping it close. “You’re not going to win every game 5-4. Just being patient and capitalizing on your opportunities; we had a couple of unlucky bounces, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”
The goal came off a breakaway; Lunn’s linemate Ben Raymond, had the initial shot, which rebounded off QU goalie Yaniv Perets (25 saves) to a waiting Lunn. It was one of several breakaways that Quinnipiac allowed throughout the first two periods of the game, as the Bobcats had trouble containing the Raiders when they broke out of their zone.
“We did a lot of good things today,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. “All year long, we talk about [how] we don’t need to be perfect, but we need to compete. I thought some of the issues we had today, especially in the second, is that we lost our F3 a lot. We had three guys below the goal line and we don’t have that middle layer. We had three forwards, nothing and then the two ‘D’ and it was like a track meet.”
McKechney and Ross Mitton each hit a post late in the second, but then the Bobcats clamped down and cut back on the Colgate breakaways.
“They’re going to give everything they’ve got; their season is on the line,” Quinnipiac senior Wyatt Bongiovanni said. “We could feel that kind of pressure coming on and you’ve got to weather the storm and go back to their zone and attack.”
Bongiovanni sealed the win for Quinnipiac with a goal at 9:40 in the third period. Classmate Ethan de Jong assisted on the goal for his 100th career point.
“I think it changed the momentum for us,” Bongiovanni said of his goal. “They had a couple of shifts in our d-zone and guys kind of sensed them getting a little momentum. For that one to go in, it gave us a lot of confidence moving forward.”
For the Bobcats, it’s a chance to redeem last season’s overtime loss to St. Lawrence in the league championship last season. Quinnipiac will face either Clarkson or Harvard in the league championship Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
“We’ve moved on; that was 12 months ago,” Pecknold said. “I think our guys have done a really go job of grinding out wins. That’s how we do it every game; it wasn’t easy, I give Colgate a lot of credit. We just find ways to win games all year long.”
