“A tie is never a tie.” Quinnipiac’s head coach Cassandra Turner said following the game Friday night after the Quinnipiac Bobcats battled back from down 3-0 in the second period to tie the Cornell Big Red and capture a point in the standings.
“I think for us today, coming back from a three-goal deficit was a huge thing for our team,” Turner said. “It will be something we use going forward.”
With the Bobcats already trailing by two goals, Cornell’s Micah Hart played the puck into the zone causing many Quinnipiac skaters to stop skating, expecting a whistle for an offside call.
The whistle never came.
Hart rifled a shot on net. The puck deflected off of a Quinnipiac stick in front to push Cornell’s lead to 3 with 9:02 left in the second period, leaving those in attendance stunned.
“I think for our team, we work to be as resilient as we can regardless of what the call is going to be,” Turner said about the last Big Red goal. “Our team has been one that has handled those moments well all year.”
Following a goalie change that replaced starter Sydney Rossman for freshman Abbie Ives for Quinnipiac, the team responded.
Less than five minutes after Hart’s goal, the Bobcats went to the power play to spark the offense when Kate MacKenzie found the puck on her stick after a scrum in front of the net and put it home to cut the Bobcats’ deficit to two2.
The Bobcats offense continued to pick up steam when Melissa Samoskevich retrieved a pass from defenseman Kati Tabin and played it to herself off the boards and rifled a shot from the blue line that beat Cornell goaltender Marlene Boissonnault, cutting the Big Red’s lead to just one as both teams headed to the locker room.
The Bobcats returned to the ice after the second intermission looking to tie the game up at three when Sarah Eve Coutu-Godbout played the puck out from behind the net to Kenzie Prater.
Prater, who was celebrating her 19th birthday with a ton of family in the stands, took the pass from Coutu-Godbout and put it in the back of the net to tie the game at three goals apiece.
“It’s a pretty good feeling,” Prater said about the goal. “I hadn’t seen my brother in four months, so I guess that was kind of my present to him.”
Both teams picked up the pressure offensively in the latter stages of the third period, but both Boissonnault and Ives stood tall for their team in net, continuing their prowess into overtime where each team could not find a game winner.
The Bobcats will return to action tomorrow afternoon when they welcome in the Colgate Raiders to the High Point Solutions Arena for their second and final ECAC matchup of the weekend.
