It was a second period surge that propelled Quinnipiac to a 4-1 victory over Brown on Senior Night. The Bobcats were a team that was riding high after taking out Yale on Friday night, and kept the momentum on their side cruising past Brown in a preview matchup of next weekend’s Eastern College Athletic Conference Tournament matchup between the two teams.
Prior to the game, Quinnipiac honored its six seniors. Derek Smith, K.J. Tiefenwerth, Tommy Schutt, Joe Fiala, Tim Clifton and Connor Clifton all took the ice with their families for a pregame ceremony. Five of the six then took the ice to take on Brown in their final regular season game at Quinnipiac. Smith, the lone senior not to play, was out of the lineup after being hit in to the boards Friday night in the team’s victory over Yale.
“Six kids that have done a lot for our program,” Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold said. “Great character, great students, great players. It has been a really good class. Obviously we lost Sam [Anas] and Devon [Toews] from this class, but they’ve done a lot for our program. It’s nice for them to get a win on Senior Night.”
Quinnipiac opened up the scoring in the first period thanks to a Nick Jermain goal, his fourth of the season. Jermain received a pass from Karlis Cukste and used a toe-drag to get around the final defender and beat Brown goaltender Gavin Nieto. It was Jermain’s first goal at home this season, a burden he is happy to get off his back.
“I was pumped to get my first home goal in front of the fans,” Jermain said. “I was just happy to get a goal for our team.”
Brown responded quickly tying the game at one less than two minutes later thanks to Charlie Corcoran’s 15th goal on the season. The goal for the Bears would be the last sign of life for the team as it was all Quinnipiac after that.
“I don’t think we played our best in the first,” Pecknold said. “I thought we re-loaded there in the second and came out hard and found a way to finish it off in the third. It was a nice win for our seniors on Senior Night.”
The Bobcats came out strong in the second period with energy that the Bears could not handle. The Bobcats were consistently a step ahead of the Bears in the second period. Tanner MacMaster picked up his seventh goal of the season just 55-seconds in to the period. Thomas Aldworth netted his seventh on the year less than two minutes later, extending Quinnipiac’s lead to 3-1. Freshman Alex Whelan got in on the scoring a few minutes later making it 4-1, the eventual final score.
“It was good to set the tone for next weekend,” Jermain said. “We wanted to come out with a little better first. It’s tough with Senior Night and playing Yale last night, but we had a really good second and third and we are going to try and carry that over until next weekend, and hopefully get two wins and move on.”
Quinnipiac finishes the regular season in fifth place in the ECAC standings and will host Brown in the opening round of the ECAC Tournament.
“Being that we’ve played them twice already this year we know what their systems are, we know how they are going to work the power-play, and how they play and how their goalies play,” Quinnipiac senior Tommy Schutt said. “We will watch video on tonight, I think we played a really good game tonight with them and shut them down in the ways that we could.”
The series between Quinnipiac and Brown will open up next Friday at 7 p.m. at the High Point Solutions Arena. Game two will be Saturday at 7 p.m. and if necessary, game three will be Sunday at 4 p.m.
