Quinnipiac and Dartmouth skate to scoreless tie

Quinnipiac vs. Dartmouth (photo copyright BobcatsHockeyBlog)

A night after both Quinnipiac and Dartmouth both got blitzed on the ice, the two teams skated to a scoreless tie on Saturday night at Frank Perotti, Jr. Arena in Hamden. It was the first scoreless tie for Quinnipiac since November 25, 2016 when they tied St. Lawrence in the Friendship Four in Belfast, Northern Ireland before moving on to the finals of the tournament in a shootout.

If you are fan of defense then this was the game for you tonight. Both goaltenders excelled with Andrew Shortridge making 27 saves for his fourth career shutout while Dartmouth's Aidan Clark who a night after being tagged for 5 goals on 12 shots made 43 saves for his first career shutout. Quinnipiac had a total of 84 shot attempts with 43 going on goal and also hit two posts on the night. Dartmouth blocked 24 Quinnipiac shots but it was once again the lack of the Bobcats ability to finish their chances that was on full display.

Quinnipiac had a 4 on 1 chance on Dartmouth but hit the post. Odeen Tufto had a chance late in the third period as well but couldn't get it past Clark. The Bobcats couldn't find consistency in the third period especially after a brutal five minute major call on Logan Mick for interference which was only called after the Dartmouth player got injured. Dartmouth took three consecutive penalties within a three minute span giving Quinnipiac a big 5 on 3 chance for just over a minute. However Quinnipiac quickly erased that opportunity when Landon Smith took an interference call and then three minutes later took another one putting Quinnipiac on the penalty kill for the remainder of the third period and into the early part of overtime.

Quinnipiac vs. Dartmouth (photo copyright BobcatsHockeyBlog)

If there were any positives in a scoreless tie, its that Quinnipiac controlled the play for a majority of the game along with the fact they dominated on the face-off dot with Bo Pieper winning 22 of 31 and Scott Davidson winning 7 of 9. For the game Quinnipiac won 48 face-offs compared to 27 for Dartmouth.

With the tie, Quinnipiac is now 6-8-2 (3-5-1 ECAC) on the season and tied for 8th in the conference standings. They wrap up play in the first semester next weekend when they host Maine in a pair of non conference games where they need to win both games to avoid ending a first half of the season with a losing record for the first time since the 2005-2006 season.

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