Quinnipiac rebounds with strong 6-2 road win over Princeton

Quinnipiac at Princeton (photo by Paul Pacelli, WQUN)

The Quinnipiac Bobcats men's ice hockey team rebounded in a big way after its struggles this past weekend as they blasted Princeton 6-2 at Hobey Baker Rink on Tuesday night. Six different players scored for Quinnipiac as they improved to 6-7-1 (3-4 ECAC) on the season. With the victory the Bobcats now are in 5th place in the ECAC standings with 6 points, 3 points behind Colgate for a top 4 spot. They also had five different players with multi point games on the night. 

Quinnipiac started the scoring 5:02 into the opening frame when Tanner MacMaster took a turnover in the neutral zone, raced into the offensive zone and buried one from the slot past Ryan Ferland. Eleven and a half minutes later Logan Mick found a loose puck in front of the net and scored top shelf on Ferland. It was a strong period for Quinnipiac that saw them out shot Princeton 12-3. 

Princeton got on the board seven and half minutes into the second period on Max Veronneau's 6th goal of the season. Quinnipiac found themselves on the power play five minutes later and made the Tigers pay when Brogan Rafferty's slap shot was re-directed by Bo Pieper past Ferland. Six and a half minutes later Quinnipiac again found the back of the net when the two teams skated four aside as Chase Priskie found Alex Whelan sitting uncovered in front of the net where he snapped a quick shot past Ferland. Quinnipiac after two periods had 28 shots compared to only 8 for Princeton.

Quinnipiac had to fight off a Princeton push in the third period where they out shot the Bobcats 15-8 in the final frame. Nick Jermain sent a dagger through the Tigers with a wrap around goal for his first of the season with less than seven minutes left to play. Princeton quickly responded on a David Hallisey goal but it was a too little too late for the Tigers with Quinnipiac's Kevin McKernan sealing a happy bus trip home to Hamden with the empty net goal. 

It was possibly Quinnipiac's best effort of the season against a quality opponent. 13 different players picked up points while the Bobcats received multi point games from Odeen Tufto (2 assists), Brogan Rafferty (2 assists), Kevin McKernan (1 goal, 1 assist), Karlis Cukste (2 assists) and a strong game from Bo Pieper (1 goal, 1 assist) who also won 10 of 16 face-offs on the night. Andrew Shortridge made 21 saves for his 5th win of the season as its looking more and more like he should see the majority of the starts the rest of the way.

Quinnipiac now heads home for two crucial ECAC games against Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend as both teams have two games in hand on Quinnipiac are right behind them in the standings.