On Monday at 9:59 p.m., Quinnipiac stood still. Students sat poised at their computers, hoping that when the clock struck 10 p.m. they would be lucky enough to come out with a ticket to what many consider is the game of the year.
The men’s ice hockey team is set to play Yale on Saturday, Nov. 9, for the 12th Annual Heroes Hat Game. This will be the first time the two teams face each other since Quinnipiac lost to Yale in the national championship in April.
Students consider this the most important game of the year – but is it just another game to the team?
It does not matter if the Bobcats are facing the worst team in the league or their cross-town rival; the goal is always to win. No game should ever be overlooked.
But that happens to be the case this weekend.
Quinnipiac played Brown the night before the highly-anticipated Yale game and won 3-0 in front of a larger-than-usual crowd, but most students did not recognize the importance of the game against the Bears.
The Bobcats did.
“We’re not overlooking this weekend and honestly we’re paying more attention to Friday,” senior captain Cory Hibbeler said earlier this week. “We obviously know that we got Yale on Saturday. That’s a big game and it’s important to all of us. But we know Brown will come and they compete as hard as any team in the league.”
Brown was the first team last season to keep the Bobcats from a championship. The Bears handed the Bobcats a 4-0 loss in the semifinals of the ECAC playoffs.
That loss was soon forgotten – and though Friday night’s game is just as important as Saturday’s, all any student can think of is whether or not Quinnipiac will “Beat Yale” in the “Battle of Whitney Ave,” as the popular T-shirts and hashtags have come to say.
However, the men in blue and gold may be a little more emotionally invested in the Yale game than they let on.
“We haven’t forgotten,” Hibbeler said. “We definitely haven’t forgotten what happened last year.”
Whether they put more significance on the Yale game or not, it is safe to say that every veteran Bobcat will enter Saturday night’s game fueled by the memory of last year’s national championship game.
