SIOUX FALLS, S.D.- It was the last Saturday in March when the Bobcats’ dreams of sending their seniors back to the Frozen Four for the second time during their tenure at Quinnipiac were diminished when North Dakota scored five unanswered goals to send the Fighting Hawks to Las Vegas.
“We were so good on Thursday,” said head coach Rand Pecknold. “Confident, passionate and then just tonight…we are a young team and immature at times. In the end, we had a great season and I will try to focus more on what we did well than what we did poorly in the end.”
Six minutes into the first period of action, North Dakota’s Jack Kernan would open up the scoring in the Regional Final, forcing the almost home-like atmosphere for NoDak to erupt into chants of “Go Sioux”.
Two minutes later, even before the Fighting Hawks’ goal song was done, Cody Croal would go on to light up the crowd once more and put the score at 2-0 North Dakota.
Just ten minutes into the first, Quinnipiac’s head coach Rand Pecknold began to shake up the lines, breaking up the power house of Antonin Verreault, Victor Czerneckianair and Tyler Borgula to try and make any form of noise with new lines like senior Anthony Cipollone, Czerneckianair and first-year Matthew Lansing.
But the line changes and defensive pairing mashups wouldn’t be enough to stop the Fighting Hawks, as Jack Kernan would notch his second of the night at the 12-minute mark to force Pecknold to make a goalie switch and put junior goaltender Matej Marinov in the net.
No matter what transitions were made, the Bobcats just could not find a way to make any form of magic happen, with two more goals flying into Quinnipiac’s net during the second period to put the nail in the coffin and end this game at 5-0, despite many offensive chances from the Bobcats during the third period.
“When we watched as a staff, we just saw a really good, fast, excellent transition team,” said North Dakota’s head coach Dane Jackson. “They[Quinnipiac] build quite a bit of their offense from stacking numbers in the neutral zone and quickly transitioning off a turnover…that was a big focus of our team.”
The Fighting Hawks will be moving on to play the Wisconsin Badgers in game one of the Frozen Four on April 9 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
While the game itself marked the end of the 2025-26 season for the Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team, it also marked the end of six seniors’ careers at Quinnipiac. Their impact on the team did not go unnoticed, with Pecknold only able to comment a tearful message of “we will miss them.”
“These guys are the epitome of winners and they set the standard for this program,” said Borgula. “Every single one of those guys impacted me in being a leader. They inspired me, this team and obviously the community around us. From the bottom of my heart and from everyone else’s heart, these guys mean the world to us; we look up to them and wish them nothing but the best in the future.”
One of the six seniors, Cipollone, joined the team in 2022-23 where he went on to win the National Championship alongside his brother Joey. Cipollone, along with Czerneckianair and Alex Power, are the lone three players remaining from that squad.
“It’s been everything,” said Cipollone. “All of my best friends are from Quinnipiac. I’m just very grateful that Rand gave me the opportunity to come and play here.”
The future is bright in Hamden, however, with a promising first-year class coming in who will be riding on the success of the current team’s group of first-years.
“They have a lot to look forward to next year,” said Cipollone. “They’re going to be a special group and this is just a building block for them. Going into next year, they need to remember this game and how hard it is to get here, so that when they are in this situation next year, they will get the job done.”
“We are still a young program, but we will learn from this,” said Pecknold. “Hopefully, everyone will come back and we will have another year under our belt. I really think we will be better next year, I do. We were younger than we normally are and I think we will take a nice jump next year.”
The Quinnipiac Bobcats finished the 2025-2026 season going 17-4-1 in ECAC conference play and 27-10-3 overall.
