After tying with AIC on Friday night, the Quinnipiac Bobcats looked to grab the win against the Yellow Jackets on Saturday night but that would prove to be a tough feat as the Bobcats forced another overtime game, this time winning 2-1.  

The game started out hot offensively for the Bobcats as Ty Smilanic had a quick breakaway one v. one after flying through the crowd of Yellow Jackets. 

“That’s a shot I work on a lot,” Smilanic said. “So, when I got that chance early on, obviously I was disappointed in myself that I couldn’t score that, but it kind of got my blood pumping pretty quick and got me into it.” 

He was unable to capitalize on this specific play but with six and a half minutes left in the period, the sophomore was able to bag one into the net off of a pass from Zach Metsa and Desi Burgart to cop his third goal of the season. 

To finish off the first period, Quinnipiac headed to the power play with only 50 seconds left, but couldn’t net one in. 

The second period was a mirror image for the Yellow Jackets as Justin Cole copied Smilanic with a goal of his own to tie the game for AIC, the forward’s 1^st of the season. 

A couple of Quinnipiac power plays saw no score as the Bobcats struggled to find a connection with them. 

That was all she wrote for regulation play, but don’t worry. There was free hockey to play!

The Bobcats and Yellow Jackets headed to a three-on-three for a sudden death and bragging rights for the weekend. The teams saw this same scene just the night before and it was clear the tensions grew. 

“Whenever things aren’t going your way, you just got to have a good reset button, you got to be able to reload and you can’t dwell on that last shift,” coach Rand Pecknold said. 

“I mean when it comes down to the end of the season, you’re trying to make the tournament,” Smilanic said. “Ties, they hurt your team so tonight we didn’t want to tie. I knew we were going to be more aggressive in overtime.” 

A couple no good shots by AIC started the overtime period. 

The Bobcats got a quick breakaway from the close AIC shots as Metsa dribbled the puck down center ice ready for a set-up shot. Unable to find one, he took it upon himself to fire the puck top shelf right to bag the win for the Bobcats and score his second goal of the season.

While Metsa is arguably the hero for the Bobcats, the stand-out player of the game was Jayden Lee. 

The junior has only found the back of the net once this season against North Dakota but created so many opportunities for the Bobcats against AIC. 

In the second, Lee had a clean breakaway, flying up the middle through the traffic to go up against AIC goaltender Alec Calvaruso unopposed. It’s this type of aggressive offense that Lee has that has given the Bobcats so many opportunities to score. 

“The bigger problem for us is we’re gripping that stick a little tight,” Pecknold said. “Guys are fanning on one Vs (one-v-ones), missing empty nets. So, we’ll try to do some offense things next week and get our confidence back for Yale.”

The Bobcats play at Yale next Friday, Nov. 5 to start off the ECAC Hockey season matchups.