Quinnipiac Captures Another ECAC Title

by Joshua Seguin/Staff Writer

When Quinnipiac was rattling off wins with ease during the first half, starting its season on a 17-game unbeaten streak, its third ECAC regular-season championship seemed inevitable. But things are never that easy, even if, in the end, Quinnipiac did just that.

"Every year is a different year with different challenges," Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. "It always seems that every year we have kids that step up. Even players like Travis St. Denis and Devon Toews, who were great payers for us last year and now they are elite players in the country for us."

Quinnipiac went into this weekend four points up on Yale with two games to play. Friday's 4-1 win over Brown officially clinched first place, making the Quinnipiac-Yale matchup Saturday night meaningless — at least for this purpose.

The second half of the season, however, despite only including one loss, has not always been great. The Bobcats have needed to come back in many games and have often trailed in games they should not have been. But the end result is all that matters.

"This is a unique team," Pecknold said. "We have four extra-attacker goals in the last month and change. That is a pretty special year. It is really interesting that we have taken a bit of heat, whether it be media or fans, saying, 'Why aren't you doing as well?' That is the naysayers that are saying the glass is half empty when it is half full.

"This is a great hockey team. We have just two losses and it is late February. Everybody has brought their A-game when they play us and this is a very resilient bunch. I am just really proud of these guys and there is still a ton of unfinished business."

There was the game at Dartmouth it probably should have lost, but it made a remarkable comeback in the third period, scoring six goals. There was a game at home against RPI that it trailed until Sam Anas scored a goal with eight seconds left to preserve a tie. More recently, Clarkson led the Bobcats late in the third period and QU won in overtime.

So to say it has been easy would be wrong, because the Bobcats are tested as much as anyone. For them, it is experience that it will need going forward to exorcise the demons that tournaments have posed for them in recent years. Quinnipiac has never won the ECAC tournament.

"Those experiences this season will be huge going forward," Quinnipiac senior St. Denis said. "From a confidence standpoint they are huge. We know whether we are down and up in a game, there is confidence in the room. This is a tight group and we know we can pull those games out."

"Winning anything in the ECAC is never easy, it is really hard," said QU goalie Michael Garteig. "The ECAC is stacked in my opinion."

The argument can be made of course that a regular-season title is that much more difficult to win than a league tournament title. It is, because well it takes 22 games to win one instead of just four, like the ECAC tournament would require of a team that wins a Cleary Cup, after a bye.

Quinnipiac's seniors, who were honored before the Brown game, have done nothing but win in their careers. Since 2012-13, the Bobcats have gone 101-32-18. It is the winningest class in the school's brief history and it has more wins than any other team in college hockey in that time span.

"It is a great group that knows how to win," Pecknold said. "They are really good hockey players and even more importantly they are good people. They get good grades, do the right things when no one is watching them and I was able to get Tom Hilbrich and Jacob Meyers in the game tonight. They may not play as much as others, but they are great teammates and a great part of our culture. Our locker room is awesome and they are two of the leaders."

The scary part is, just three of note will graduate — Travis St. Denis, Garteig and Alex Miner-Barron. Those three are joined along with equally important role players like Hilbrich and Meyers.

"Our class may not be the most skilled class in the country, but I think there is a lot of character," Garteig said. "We have accomplished a lot in our four years here and we are not done yet. We have a lot to do and we are going to rattle off a lot of wins here. It is going to be fun."

Of course all this is dandy, but what this team will be judged on is what it does in March. Quinnipiac looks well setup going forward, much like it did in 2012-13 when it had 30 wins and rolled into the ECAC playoffs. That team lost to Brown in the ECAC semifinals, and wound up playing Yale in the league's consolation game. Those two teams met again a couple of weeks later for the national championship, which Yale won.

Quinnipiac has just one game left in the regular season, and is 15-1-5. If it stays at one loss, it would be the first team to do that since RPI went 21-1-0 en route to a national championship in 1985.

Whether this Quinnipiac team is any different than others who came up short in the ECACs, remains to be seen.

But no matter what, winning three regular-season titles in four seasons, in a league that has come to be as tough as the ECAC is in recent years, is quite the accomplishment unto itself.