Quinnipiac Comes from Behind to Hand M. Hockey its First Loss

HAMDEN, Conn. — Early in the second period of Saturday night’s ECAC championship game rematch, the Harvard men’s hockey team did something it hadn’t done in over a season—take a lead against Quinnipiac.

Certainly not by chance, either—at the time, the No. 10/10 Crimson had twice as many shots as the No. 7/8 Bobcats, the same team that had scored six times on a whopping 54 tries on goal the night before.

But within 12 minutes, the lead vanished. And it vanished for good.

The Quinnipiac bench greets the three members of its second line after they helped produce the Bobcats' go-ahead power-play goal late in the second. By Thomas W. Franck

Despite continuing to control play for much of the night, Harvard let a statement win slip right through its fingers on Saturday, surrendering three unanswered goals to the defending ECAC champions in what amounted to a 4-2 Quinnipiac victory at High Point Solutions Arena. The Crimson (4-1-1, 2-1-1 ECAC) shot itself in the foot with nine penalties, shaky goaltending, and one too many special teams lapses.

“There’s ultimately a lot of factors that lead to winning games, and regardless of all the other stuff, special teams and goaltending are still at the top of the list,” Harvard coach Ted Donato ’91 said. “Those are two areas we need to be better at, and we’ll leave it at that.”

The Bobcats (7-3-1, 3-1-0) tied the game with 7:22 left in the second period, when top-line forward Craig Martin’s wrister from atop the right faceoff circle ate up junior goaltender Merrick Madsen, soaring right past his glove.

Three minutes later, Quinnipiac had a chance to pull ahead on the power play; yet, with the visitors possessing the puck with 20 seconds left on the man-up, the Crimson appeared poised to complete the kill. However, sophomore defenseman Viktor Dombrovskiy fanned on his attempted clear, enabling Bobcat forward Luke Shiplo to fire the go-ahead goal from the slot just seconds later.

Sophomore forward Ryan Donato flings a shot towards goal. By Thomas W. Franck

Quinnipiac’s 3-2 edge would stand the rest of the way—that is, until a diving empty-netter from senior forward Tommy Schutt doubled the lead in the game’s final minute. The Bobcats still have not lost a regular-season ECAC contest in their own building since December 2014.

“It’s frustrating; I thought we played well,” Donato said. “Obviously we carried the play for most of the night. We made a couple mistakes; they end up in the back of our net.”

Quinnipiac opened the scoring a little over a minute into the first period. After senior Sean Malone was whistled for a hold just 19 seconds after puck drop, freshman defenseman Brogan Rafferty’s blast from the point beat a screened Madsen glove-side. The power-play goal was the first of two for the Bobcats—interestingly, three Quinnipiac defensemen were on the ice for the first conversion, while four forwards helped produce the second one.

Sophomore defenseman Viktor Dombrovskiy scored the Crimson's first goal of the game midway through the first. By Thomas W. Franck

Moments later, things nearly went from bad to worse for Harvard, as junior Landon Smith and Shiplo embarked on an effective 2-on-0 reminiscent of a typical Bobcat chance from the Crimson’s infamous first-period meltdown at Madison Square Garden in January.

Yet, Harvard survived the defensive lapse and settled in rather quickly. Dombrovskiy equalized with his second goal of the weekend at 8:26 in the period, ripping a trailing pass from senior Tyler Moy past junior goaltender Chris Truehl from the slot.

Then atoning for his costly play in the opening minute of period one, Malone made amends in the opening minute of period two. The second-line center slipped his own rebound past Truehl 24 seconds into the middle frame to put the Crimson up, 2-1.

After collecting his own rebound, senior Sean Malone punched in this opportunity to give the Crimson its first lead over Quinnipiac in more than a season. By Thomas W. Franck

But ultimately, the mistakes that followed proved too costly for the icemen from Cambridge. After the game, Donato said he felt Quinnipiac made big saves, while his side did not. Furthermore, when asked about the nine penalties the Crimson racked up, his response concluded with, “It’s hard to score from the penalty box.”

Another thing Donato felt his side could have done much better was execute on the power play. While Harvard took nine penalties, so did the hosts. But while each team received five power plays, the Bobcats converted two of them, and the Crimson came up empty on all five.

Harvard’s last power-play opportunity arose with 2:44 remaining. In pursuit of the equalizer, the Crimson skated 6-on-4 for the final 36 seconds of the man advantage, but Truehl (30 saves) would not be beaten again. Twenty seconds following the penalty’s expiration, Schutt buried his empty-netter to wrap things up.

“Harvard’s a great team—that’s a top 10 team,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. “But good teams find ways to win.”

GAME NOTES

Alexander Kerfoot (14) was not happy with Quinnipiac's Connor Clifton (4) for the big hit he put on the Harvard co-captain and also his drawing of a retaliation penalty. By Thomas W. Franck

— After the game, Donato indicated that he was upset early on because he thought there were "some targeted head shots out there." One of them led Donato to become visibly animated midway through the second period, as Bobcat captain Connor Clifton laid a high hit on Harvard co-captain Alexander Kerfoot—a play that led to penalties against both sides (Kerfoot for retaliation).

"I don’t really see much a place for it in the game and didn’t think it was handled all that well," Donato said, speaking generally about the perceived head shots. "That’s something that we’ll address with the people we need to address it with."

— Freshman Frederic Gregoire and sophomore Michael Floodstrand made their season debuts on the fourth line.

"We wanted to see what we have," Donato said. "It’s still early here, and those guys have performed very well in practice. I think we’re still in the learning and evaluation stage."

— Harvard won the shots on goal count, 32-21, on the night. In total, the Crimson had 65 shot attempts to Quinnipiac's 39.

—Staff writer Jake Meagher can be reached at jake.meagher@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @MeagherTHC.