This is the third of four previews for teams playing in the 2023 NCAA Men’s Frozen Four this week in Tampa, Fla. Click here for all of USCHO’s Frozen Four coverage.
Quinnipiac Bobcats
Season record: 32-4-3
How they got to Tampa: Won the Bridgeport Regional by defeating Merrimack 5-0 and Ohio State 4-1.
Top players: F Collin Graf (20-36-56), F Ethan de Jong (18-21-39), F Sam Lipkin (13-26-39), D Zach Metsa (8-25-33).
Top goalie: G Yaniv Perets (32-4-3, 1.46 goals-against average, .932 save percentage).
Why they’ll win the national championship: That little hiccup that cost Quinnipiac a shot at ECAC’s postseason crown was quickly forgotten by two dominant performances in the NCAA regional in the Bobcats’ backyard of Bridgeport, Conn. It was the one regional that almost everyone predicted would result in a No. 1 seed falling, but the Bobcats thrashed a blazing hot Merrimack team before dispatching one of the Big Ten’s four entries with a 4-1 win over Ohio State. No other team besides Minnesota — which drew a very different first round matchup in Canisius — can boast that resume.
Why they won’t advance to the Frozen Four: Congratulations on winning your regional, Quinnipiac. Now go out and beat Michigan, which is probably the best team in the country, the Big Ten champion, and a team that beat Colgate with an 11-1 result before defeating Big Ten compatriot Penn State to win its way into Tampa. And if you do somehow get through that, the road to the championship requires defeating either Minnesota, the No. 1 overall seed, or Boston University, which started playing its best hockey in the Hockey East tournament.
It’s not that Quinnipiac is somehow less desirable than the other three programs, but the path to this point of a season isn’t ingrained in the Bobcats’ decades-long history. Its first opponent, Michigan, is tied for the most NCAA championships and won six of college hockey’s first nine awarded titles. Minnesota and Boston University are equally as historic with five banners of their own, and each has approximately two dozen appearances to their credit.
In contrast, Quinnipiac didn’t join Division I until the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference formed a hockey league in the late 1990s, but ever since transitioning into the ranks, the team that used to play at the humble Northford Ice Pavilion is now in its third Frozen Four appearance after sweeping through a regional with its eighth NCAA tournament qualification of the past 10 years.
“It’s not easy to get [to the Frozen Four],” said coach Rand Pecknold, who has helmed the program since its Division III days in the ECAC South. “It’s really hard. You have to have a lot of things go your way. You have to have the goaltending and some timely goals, but this group compared to our other Frozen Four teams, there are just more similarities than differences. It’s really about our culture, guys that are willing to be selfless and have the buy-in to be successful against teams.”
Quinnipiac is one of the more mercurial cases of this year’s Frozen Four field. Some thought that the Bobcats would become this year’s upset special when the tournament field slotted them against fourth-seeded Merrimack in the first round, and the constant criticism that ECAC’s lower tier propped up the win percentage seemed to only intensify when the Bobcats lost in the league semifinals to Colgate, which rode a hot goaltender to the conference championship win over Harvard.
Despite all of that, Quinnipiac remains the No. 2 overall seed and is entering Tampa with the top-ranked scoring defense in the country, the No. 3-rated scoring offense and No. 4 overall penalty kill. They are the least penalized team in the nation and the only team to average less than seven minutes per game in the box.
Individual scorers like Collin Graf, Ethan de Jong and Sam Lipkin rank among the best players in the nation. Goalie Yaniv Perets is the only player in the country with 30 wins, and he enters the Frozen Four with a save percentage that’s .001 behind Northeastern’s Devon Levi for the nation’s best number while simultaneously posting a goals-against average that was a half-goal better than any other player in the country.
“I don’t understand why he’s underrated,” Pecknold smirked during his first Frozen Four media appearance. “I hear that a lot, but his record is ridiculous over the last two years. His save percentage, shutouts, wins, so I don’t know why people would underrate him. He’s just outstanding. He’s committed to his craft, and he works on [improving] every day. He’s worked on his puck handling. He tracks the puck well, he battles, he competes, and he has that elite goalie IQ that he really needs to play well.”
Underrated or not, Quinnipiac won’t have to look very far to get a shot at once again proving its No. 1 regional seed was warranted in the national tournament. Despite all of the posturing, the three players who comprised this year’s Hobey Hat Trick are on two of the three teams that the Bobcats are looking to conquer for their first national championship. The first opponent, Michigan, is the team that eliminated the second-seeded Bobcats with a 7-4 win in last year’s Allentown Regional Final.
“There are some things we did really well last year against Michigan,” Pecknold said. “We played pretty well at times in that game. We just had a slow start and probably [needed] to defend better, and they made some plays. There are definitely things that are different from last year — [Michigan’s] Brandon Naurato is a good coach but was an assistant on last year’s staff — but in the end, they still have high-end players that replaced the guys that left for the NHL. We know we need to be able to defend in waves, and you need to make them play defense.”
