The Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team bounced back Tuesday night after a shutout loss over the weekend to beat the University of Massachusetts by a score of 3-2.
Although Quinnipiac went 0-8 on the power play continuing their recent man advantage woes, head coach Rand Pecknold acknowledged some struggles but was pleased with the overall result.
“You know, it’s a win and we’ll take it and move on,” Pecknold said. “There was a lot of great things I thought we did tonight and then we had a lot of struggles and a lot of frustration in our game at times. You’ve got to give UMass credit, their goalie played really well and hung in there, but we’re fortunate we found a way to get the win.”
The Bobcats struck twice in the first period giving them an early 2-0 lead. The first goal came just under 11 minutes into the game when Bo Pieper took a shot from the top of the attacking zone face off circle. Tommy Schutt had been lurking near the crease and picked up a juicy rebound bringing it across the slot and tucking it past UMass goaltender Nic Renyard.
Quinnipiac picked up another just under four minutes later when Pieper fired a shot from the high slot. The puck rang off the crossbar and found its way past the goal line giving Pieper his second goal of the season and his second point of the night.
When asked if he was looking to step up this season with the loss of key offensive players the season before, Pieper credited his teammates with having a similar goal and attitude.
“Yeah, I think everyone is,” Pieper said. “Like you said we lost Sam [Anas], we lost Saint [Travis St. Denis], the year before we lost Matt Peca and you know those are big parts of our offense but they’re big parts of our whole team both in the locker room and on the ice. So I think everyone is kind of looking to step up or kind of mix up some personnel here trying to see who can step up and hopefully I can be a guy that continues to fill that role.”
UMass was able to get one back on the board with 1:31 remaining in the first period when sophomore Ryan Badger picked up a pass down low and wrapped it around the net poking it past goaltender Chris Truehl’s glove to cut the lead down to 2-1 before the buzzer blew.
The Minutemen were able to pick up the 2-2 equalizer during the second period when Jack Suter tucked a lose puck underneath net front bodies and through the legs of Truehl.
Truehl would immediately lock in after this play shutting down the Minutemen’s scoring on his way to his third win of the season. He turned away 17 of the 19 shots he faced during the contest.
The Bobcats were unable to score during the frame and by the conclusion of it were outshooting the Minutemen by a margin of 31-13 with only two points on the scoreboard to show for it. When asked about the attitude towards the shot onslaught, Pieper spoke of the recent importance of getting the puck on net.
“You know I think that was a really big emphasis of ours before the game because the last three games we haven’t got as many shots on net as we had hoped for,” Pieper said. “But, you know everyone is an experienced player we know some games pucks go in, some games pucks don’t; so we knew if we kept getting shots that eventually one one would find its way in and in the third period Tanner [MacMaster] puts one on net and it goes in and it wins the game for us.”
MacMaster was able to seal game for the Bobcats in the third and final frame entering the attacking zone near the UMass bench and taking a shot from outside of the slot ripping it past Minutemen goaltender Nic Renyard. MacMaster picked up his second goal of the season and his fourth point as well.
Quinnipiac will take a breather during the next week and a half before facing off with conference foes Clarkson on Nov. 4 and St. Lawrence on Nov. 5, both of which are games that will be played on the road.
