Quinnipiac’s Petruzzelli spending plenty of time on the ice
In a college season where each moment between the goal posts is to be cherished, Keith Petruzzelli has spent more time on the ice than any hockey player in the country.
He has played 1,343 minutes for the Quinnipiac hockey team, 71 more than Jack LaFontaine of Minnesota. And in this horrid season of COVID, minutes spent on the ice might be the sweetest stat of all.
Compare his numbers to the Yale goalies. Or Harvard or Union or any of the eight ECAC schools that chose not to compete this winter because of the pandemic. They played zero minutes.
“It has been a crazy year, hasn’t it?” the senior from Wilbraham, Massachusetts said. “We’re all trying to make the best of it. Quinnipiac has done such an awesome job getting us on the ice. It’s great to be out there and competing, getting that ice time a lot of teams haven’t be able to get.”
What the 6-51⁄2 goaltender has done with those 1,343 minutes — third in the nation with 14 wins and four shutouts and fifth with a 1.66 goals against — is what
makes his teammates and his coach so confident short term and the Detroit Red Wings hopeful over the long run.
“Keith has been, by far, the backbone of our team,” senior captain Odeen Tufto said.
A check of the media guide shows Petruzzelli is taller than more than half the basketball team. The hockey team? Well, let’s put it this way: Tufto and Petruzzelli are Quinnipiac’s two Hobey Baker nominees and one is 11 inches taller than the other.
Petruzzelli has been one of the handful of best goalies in the nation and Tufto, who has 10 more assists than anyone, has been college hockey’s best playmaker. No goalie has won the Hobey Baker, given to the top collegiate player, since Ryan Miller in 2001. Goal-scorers usually get the nod over playmakers.
“There is a little more emphasis on goals than assists and the top goalies almost get left out of the equation,” coach Rand Pecknold said. “Sometimes the best player in the country is a goalie. I go to Eric Hartzell and he was runner up that year (Drew LeBlanc won in 2013). I’m still adamant. I don’t get how Eric didn’t win it. He was so good for us. He launched our program to another level.”
If teams are to advance to the Frozen Four in the oneand-done NCAA Tournament, obviously the goaltending must be sharp. The Bobcats got it from Hartzell in 2013 and Michael Garteig in 2016. Ranked seventh by PairWise and 11/12 in the two polls, they have their third shot with Petruzzelli.
He committed to Quinnipiac in the ninth grade. You read right. Ninth grade. He was taken by the Red Wings in the third round of the 2017 NHL draft, the second highest in Quinnipiac history. It also is true he didn’t make an impact until his junior season when he started all 34 games, going 21-10-2 with a 2.01 GAA, .920 save percentage and three shutouts. He was named the team MVP.
He is an Iron Man with 57 consecutive starts.
“Keith has been great,” Pecknold said. “The last two years, he has blossomed into an elite goaltender at the NCAA level. He really reads the play well. He has been great on breakaways and shootouts. He has always been pretty good handling the puck, but I think he has taken a big jump this year. He really makes good decisions on retrievals and that just makes life easier on our D going back to play the puck.
“It’s part of the whole maturation process. He has matured each year for four years. And this year is no different.”
It isn’t that his hands have improved, it’s selfassurance.
“It has a lot to do with my confidence,” he said. “When I’m out there feeling good, I’m getting out and trying to help the boys with the breakout. I’m not just leaving it behind the net. It helps me get into games when I get a puck touch early on.”
Tufto has watched Petruzzelli’s development for four years. He has seen that self-assurance grow.
“Last year, Keith took a lot of big strides,” he said. “He came into this year and his confidence has been everything. He knows what he can do. There have been some games we’re not clicking or the other team is outplaying us, he keeps us in every game.”
Dave Petruzzelli, who still plays in men’s leagues in his 50s, introduced Keith’s older brother D.J. to the game first.
“As the younger one I got thrown in the net,” Keith said. “At some point, I realized I loved it. My dad realized I was pretty good at it. So we stuck with it.”
D.J., who played a year with the Bobcats, committed at the same time as Keith. The Quinnipiac staff saw Keith playing with the Boston Junior Bruins U-16 team before he switched halfway through the year to play at Springfield (Mass.) Cathedral.
“I was 14,” Petruzzelli said. “Quinnipiac was the first program to reach out. My dad actually grew up in Hamden. Obviously, that was a big draw. It was a crazy time. I talked to some other schools. I went to visit BU and UMass. But Quinnipiac was always my No. 1. So when the offer came, we took it.”
Ninth grade?
“Very few times that’s happened,” Pecknold said. “You could tell he was the real deal. He was 14 and already 6-4.”
“I don’t know if I was 6-4 yet,” Petruzzelli said, laughing, “but I was up there.”
He put in a strong junior season for the Muskegon Lumberjacks of the USHL in 2016-2017, made the all-rookie team, got drafted. He hit a speed bump his freshman year, adjusting to college and college hockey, played sparingly with a 2-4-2 record. He did much better in 14 games his sophomore year, going 8-3 with a 2.42 GAA, but Andrew Shortridge turned in the best save percentage and second-best GAA in the nation.
“When we drafted him, we had a really physically and mentally immature player,” Red Wings director of player development Shawn Horcoff told NHL.com in 2020. “He had no idea what it took to be a pro, he had no idea what eating habits, workout habits, sleeping habits (he needed).”
To his credit, Horcoff said, Petruzelli went to work on it. With Shortridge foregoing his senior year to sign with the San Jose Sharks organization, Petruzzelli answered with a terrific junior year. He answered any questions. This year, as the backbone of his team, it has been the world spinning around him with all the question marks.
“It’s weird for sure,” Petruzzelli said. “Senior Night got canceled. No fans. We don’t have our series with UMass. No BC and BU.”
There is plenty of Clarkson, St. Lawrence and Colgate. Six times each, so he gets more than his share of the top six forwards from those ECAC teams.
“You start to keen in on their tendencies, they start to keen in on yours,” Petruzzelli said. “I’ve been watching a lot of video. When you are seeing the same kids a lot, it can make a big difference.
“I really like our chances this year. I love our team. It’s tougher to judge with the schedules. We played at Bowling Green early on (two losses with a lineup still affected by COVID). Other than that, we don’t play against really high-caliber, non-conference teams. So it’ll be interesting once we get to the NCAA Tournament. I definitely think we’re going to make the tournament.”
In a season where ice time is so precious, Keith Petruzzelli wants all the minutes he can get.