By Brian Farrell, Senior Staff Writer
Hamden, Conn. – If at the start of the year, you thought Quinnipiac could win the National Championship you were not alone.
In the early October, Quinnipiac captain Zack Currie told the QU Chronicle that, “There’s no reason for us to lose to anybody this year. We’re good enough to say that. So unless we win that last game, I won’t be satisfied.”
Winning the last game means one thing and that’s that the Bobcats are National Champions. While the prediction was bold to say the least, Currie and his team are two wins away from something that seemed farfetched at the beginning of the year.
That might have been true for other fans around the league, or even on this campus, and for the media members. For the players that actually control whether they win or lose, it was not a stretch at all.
“At the start of the year we knew that we had a really good team and had a chance to do something special,” Currie explained to a room full of media members yesterday. “It was one of our goals that we wrote down as a team at the start. Right from the start we knew we had the team, the guys, and the personnel to go really far.”
The Bobcats lost a handful of key players from last year’s roster including hard workers Yuri Bouharevich, Spencer Heichman, goaltender Dan Clarke, stay at home defenseman Mike Glaicar and captain Scott Zurevinski.
This season, unlike years in the past, those players were replaced. Clarke served as another option for Rand Pecknold, but never emerged to take over the No. 1 start in the goaltender rotation. Glaicar, while a big body and smart player, never provided back-line production like Mike Dalhuisen has this year posting eight goals and eight assists.
The forecheck and hustle that Heichman and Bouharevich provided was picked up by the entire team this year, including the top scorers. Most importantly, the leadership was replaced. After leading the team for two seasons, Zurevinski graduated and Currie was elected this year’s captain.
“Jean-Marc [Beaudoin] was pretty laid back … but he had that aura about him that when he spoke it was a serious matter,” Currie said last year after being elected. “With Zurvy, he was much more vocal guy and in your face … he really stood up for what he believed in and that’s something that I want to carry on.”
What Currie believed in was a championship. But like the team’s success, it didn’t come over night.
“Before I came here I don’t think I thought about [a National Championship] too much,” Currie said. “When you come here as a freshman you have to get the feel for everything. When I first got here it was apparent that it was something that we were going to be working for whether it was a reasonable goal or not.”
One year ago yesterday, Currie made his first statement as team captain about his goal for this season. At the time, Union, Boston College, Ferris State and Minnesota were preparing for the 2012 Frozen Four, while Currie was preparing for the 2013 Frozen Four.
“It’s game on for next season,” Currie said last year. “It starts right now and we have got a lot of work to do. We have that championship in mind and you have to start now.”
Now Currie’s bold statement is leaving the doubters from last year and from October standing and corrected.
“We’ve been confident the whole way through and we try not to be over confident, but I look at our team and I can match it up against any other team in the country, and if we play well that night we have a good chance to win,” Currie said. “So having said that, there’s no reason for us to not win every game.”
At the same time, Currie knows the year is not over.
“We’ve definitely got more work to do. We are proud and we’re excited about where we’ve gotten and what we’ve accomplished, but we have a goal of winning the national championship this year and we are still two games away from that.”
