By Ben Dias, QBSN Staff Writer
The only college hockey game being played on Tuesday evening was in Hamden. The game ended up being a 2-1 loss for the Quinnipiac men’s hockey team to the American International Yellow Jackets of the Atlantic Hockey Association. Coming into Tuesday’s game, Quinnipiac owned a 26-11-2 all-time record against American International, including 11 straight wins. However, AIC goaltender Ben Meisner was the hero in net and stole the show. Through Tuesday’s game, Meisner had registered a 4.14 goals-against average, but he stopped 38 shots and allowed only one goal.
“We tried to play with a little more urgency and we played too much one-on-one hockey,” head coach Rand Pecknold said. “If you’re struggling to score goals, you have to play better defense than that.”
Senior Mike Dalhuisen ((Nymegen, Holland) scored the Bobcats’ only goal, with assists to senior Ben Arnt (Oakdale, Minn.) and junior Jordan Samuels-Thomas (South Windsord, Conn.). Freshman Michael Garteig, (Prince George, British Columbia) got the start between the pipes and made 16 saves on 18 shots.
Midway through the second period, the Yellow Jackets withstood the Bobcats power-play after Jeff Ceccacci was called for hitting from behind. Shortly after, the Yellow Jackets registered the first goal of the game. Chris Porter put the Yellow Jackets on the board first giving them a 1-0 lead at the less than seven minutes into the second period. The Bobcats took control of the puck deep in their own defensive zone, but AIC’s Nathan Sliwinski intercepted the puck between two Bobcats and fed a pass to Alexander MacMillan in the left face-off circle. MacMillan sent a pass to Porter who lifted a shot on goal that Garteig initially blocked, but Porter corralled the rebound and poked a shot around Garteig for the goal.
American International had another scoring chance shortly after but Arnt dove across the crease to save a goal after Garteig was caught out of the net.
Sophomore Matthew Peca (Pentawawa, Ontario) had an opportunity skating down the slot between Yellow Jackets defenders but, his wrist-shot rung off the cross bar and deflected to the boards.
The third period was a lot of back and forth action, then AIC took a 2-0 lead after Matt Cassidy sent a slap shot past Garteig. Richard Leitner intercepted a Quinnipiac pass in the neutral zone and skated down the right wing. With a three-one-one advantage developed as Leitner centered a pass to Matt Cassidy, who found Brandon Fagerheim on the left wing. Fagerheim played the puck back to Cassidy who one-timed a shot past Garteig.
With less than seven minutes remaining, Quinnipiac finally got on the board, but it was not enough. Arnt won a face-off in the Yellow Jackets’ defensive zone, sending the puck to his right to Samuels-Thomas. Samuels-Thomas touch-passed the puck back to Dalhuisen at the point who blasted a shot on goal. With Samuels-Thomas screening Meisner, Dalhuisen’s shot found the post above Meisner’s left shoulder and rattled home to cut AIC’s lead in half, 2-1.
Quinnipiac could not manage a final surge after Garteig was pulled for the extra-attacker with about a minute left, and the Yellow Jackets survived with a road win ending Quinnipiac’s 11-game winning-streak over AIC.
Both teams were held without a power-play goal. Quinnipiac was 0-for-5, and through seven games have failed to convert on the man-advantage. AIC was 0-for-1 on the man-advantage.
‘We’re struggling right now and obviously we miss Connor Jones,” Pecknold said. “We just have a chunk of guys on each unit that aren’t playing with a lot of confidence right now. There were probably four or five times where we made bad decisions and wasted power-plays and got shots blocked. We are going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure things out.”
The Bobcats return to the ice this weekend for the opening ECAC hockey series. Quinnipiac will host Colgate, on Friday, Nov. 9 and Cornell on Saturday Nov. 10. Both games are scheduled to face-off at 7 p.m.
Senior captain Zack Currie realizes that the team must refocus itself in order to be successful and push forward while facing adversity.
“I think we just have to take a step back and realize that we can be a very good hockey team and we’re expected to be a very good hockey team and we’re just simply not playing to our potential right now,” Currie said. “We just have to take a step back and know what we need to do and focus on the little things and get back to work.”
