One goal was all that it took, as the Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team (26-7-3, 15-5-2 ECAC) skated past the Princeton Tigers (15-14-2, 13-8-1 ECAC) 2-0 on Saturday afternoon to advance to the ECAC Semifinals.
It was a game that seemed to be the antithesis of Friday afternoon’s game for the Bobcats, who had managed seven goals against the Tigers.
“I thought they found it, I thought yesterday might have been our best effort of the year,” head coach Rick Seeley said. “To follow up again with a shutout against Princeton, who was probably the hottest team in the ECAC heading into the playoffs, we’re real happy with that.”
For senior Chelsea Laden, both games ended in shutouts; Saturday’s being her sixteenth on the season. She is one shutout away from tying the NCAA single season shutout record set by Noora Raty in 2012-13.
The pace of the second game was quite similar to the first, with Quinnipiac outshooting Princeton 36 to 16. The most frustrating aspect of the game for the Bobcats seemingly was the better timing and positioning of the Tigers’ defense, which picked up sticks and made sure to maintain pressure in shooting lanes.
“I thought Princeton came out a lot harder today and disrupted some of the flow we had from yesterday,” Seeley said.
The difference-maker was put in with four minutes left to play in the second period, a power play goal notched by junior Nicole Connery, whose wide open far post wrist shot sailed cleanly past Princeton’s Kimberly Newell.
Quinnipiac heads up to number one host Clarkson to take on Harvard University in the semifinals in a single game elimination. Harvard comes in as the number two seed in the ECAC, and is the only team to have swept Quinnipiac in the season series.
“We wanted to play them,” Laden said. “As soon as that last Harvard game ended, we were like ‘I wanna play them tomorrow!’ because we know that we’re just as good or better of a team then them. We’re really looking forward to it.”