The Crimson may have been introduced as the visiting squad during the starting lineup announcements, but the players of Harvard played as if they were skating on their home ice back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 30 seconds into the opening period, the nation’s leading scorer, Jimmy Vesey, banked a puck off of the Bobcats’ junior goaltender Michael Garteig to put the Crimson up 1-0.
“I stepped over the goal line and just wanted to put something on net, and it ran up [Garteig’s] stick and into the net…I think it was a big goal for us,” Vesey said.
Harvard (20-12-3, 11-8-3 ECAC) continued its dominance on the ice, though its next goal would not come until the 14:55 mark, when Colin Blackwell made Quinnipiac (20-11-3, 16-3-3 ECAC) pay for a too many men on the ice penalty. Blackwell netted his fourth goal of the year on the power play. Under a minute later, Tyler Moy took advantage of a Bobcat turnover, putting the moves on Garteig on a breakaway. Quinnipiac’s head coach Rand Pecknold pulled Garteig after Moy’s goal for freshman Sean Lawrence, but Garteig was put back in the net at the start of the second period.
Bobcats head coach, Rand Pecknold, talked about his reaction after the first period.
“I don’t think I can say [what I said to the team] to the media… I wasn’t happy. The players weren’t happy…I didn’t say a lot. They knew,” Pecknold said.
In the second period, Harvard went right back to work, getting early shots on Garteig. Quinnipiac senior co-captain Danny Federico took a hooking penalty with 12:45 to play in the middle period. The Crimson dominated the first half of the power play, but a forced turnover saw senior Alex Barron and grad student Justin Agosta on a 2-on-1 going towards the Harvard end of the ice. Barron received a pass from Agosta and then whiffed on a pass to a trailing junior Travis St. Denis, but still was able to pick it up and St. Denis sent it past the Crimson goaltender, Steve Michalek, to put the Bobcats on the board.
Later on in the period the Bobcats continued to show improvement on the Olympic-sized sheet of ice, and after a reviewed non-goal call was re-confirmed, junior Soren Jonzzon continued his hot streak, sending a hard shot past Michalek with five minutes to play in the second period to bring the Bobcats within one.
The third period started off with a hard open ice hit on Blackwell from sophomore Tim Clifton that resulted in his ejection and a five-minute-major penalty for contact to the head. The Bobcats didn’t give the Crimson much to work with during the man-advantage clearing the puck every chance they had and killed it off. With just a little over 12 minutes to play, the Bobcats were still down by a goal and were threatening another dramatic comeback, much like a week ago. Play was pretty evenly matched throughout the rest of the period, and the Crimson had some great offensive break-ins as well as great ability to waste time on the clock while holding the one goal lead.
Garteig was pulled with just over two minutes to play in the third period and the Bobcats had trouble handling the puck and Vesey added his second of the game on the empty net. Sean Malone also added an empty netter shortly after to seal the deal
For the third consecutive year, Quinnipiac was eliminated from the ECAC Tournament in the semifinals.
“We don’t make excuses if kids are injured. We have to have other players step up. We don’t blame the officials whether we like the way they call the game or not,” Pecknold said. “But in the end we didn’t play well enough to win. But I’ll say this, I’m really proud of my team, they’re a great group of guys, we battled back, but things didn’t go our way tonight.”
The fate of the Bobcats’ at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament rests in the hands of the other league post-season games happening this weekend. Currently the Bobcats are No. 15 in the PairWise rankings (via USCHO.com).
“We controlled our own destiny today and we didn’t handle it. So, we’ll have to see how everything falls…in the end we’ll have to wait until Sunday,” Pecknold said.
Harvard will play Colgate (the team that eliminated the Bobcats in the semifinals last season) in the ECAC finals. Harvard is looking for it’s first Whitelaw Cup since 2006, while Colgate is looking for its first since 1990. This is the Raiders’ second consecutive ECAC Championship appearance. Colgate lost to eventual NCAA Champion Union last year in Lake Placid.
