The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale, Quinnipiac hockey teams look to 2nd half of season
HAMDEN — It was a blasé first half of the season for Quinnipiac, which won just two of six ECAC Hockey games, leaving it in 10th place in the standings.
But the Bobcats managed to enter the holiday break on a positive note, knocking off UMass, ranked 10th in the nation, to get back to .500 overall. That game, played two days after Thanksgiving in Amherst, Mass., also gave Quinnipiac a full month to rest, regroup and heal in advance of the alwaysharsh second half, when there’s little time for rest and very few easy games on the schedule.
In order to catch up with the rest of the league in the standings, the Bobcats (771, 231) will need to make the most of games against teams with lesser talent. Princeton, the opponent this weekend, certainly fits that bill.
The travel partners met Saturday in New Jersey (a 31 Bobcats win), with the back end of a homeandaway series to be played Sunday in Hamden (7 p.m., ESPN+).
Princeton (283, 042), no longer with lethal forwards Max Veronneau, Ryan Kuffner, Alex
Riche and Josh Teves, are the ECAC’s lowest scoring team, mustering only seven goals in six league games.
Quinnipiac, with 11 goals in six ECAC games, hasn’t exactly been lighting the league on fire offensively, something the Bobcats must correct for the second half in order to make a serious run at a topfour finish.
So the Tigers could be just what the doctor ordered for Quinnipiac. Goaltending has been a major problem for Princeton. Junior Ryan Ferland struggled badly, forcing coach Ron Fogarty to move to sophomore Jeremie Forget and freshman Aidan Porter in hopes of lighting a spark.
Entering Saturday night’s game at Princeton, the three had combined to allow 3.07 goals per game while saving just 89 percent of opposing shots on net.
Quinnipiac, loaded with scoring depth, simply hasn’t found itself offensively yet. Odeen Tufto, the team’s leading scorer, has 13 points but only one goal. Sophomore Wyatt Bongiovanni (six goals, four assists, 10 points) is the only other forward averaging more than a halfpoint per game.
Keith Petruzzelli, now a junior and the everyday goalie, had been especially sharp leading into the break. He posted a 1.52 goalsagainst average and .938 save percentage in his previous six games, representing the best stretch of his career and showing the skill that made him a thirdround draft choice of the Detroit Red Wings the summer before his arrival on campus.
MCGILL VISITS INGALLS
Yale coach Keith Allain is a creature of habit, and his postChristmas preference is to ease his team back from the Christmas break with a weekend exhibition game. McGill, an elite Canadian university located in Montreal, visits Ingalls Rink for the third time in five years on Sunday (4 p.m., ESPN+).
The Bulldogs defeated McGill 52 last December and 41 in December 2015.
The exhibition formula has been a successful one for Yale, which historically has returned from the long holiday break rested and revitalized. It certainly doesn’t hurt matters that the Bulldogs, after a brutal start to the season, won three straight games leading into the break.
That includes an impressive 31 victory over Maine at Ingalls on Dec. 10, a gritty win in which the Bulldogs played their best overall game of the season.
Corbin Kaczperski was especially strong against Maine, making 31 saves to earn ECAC Hockey goalie of the week honors. The senior, in his third season as a Yale regular, had struggled in his previous nine games, allowing over three goals per game while saving fewer than 90 percent of opposing shots on net.
Yale, which has lacked scoring depth for several seasons, relies on stingy defense to spark offensive chances on the other end to be successful. The defensive personnel is in place at the blue line, a diverse group led by senior Billy Sweezey and sophomores Jack St. Ivany and junior Phil Kemp.
Curtis Hall, a sophomore forward and the team’s second leading scorer with six goals and seven points, is playing for the United States at the World Junior Championships in the Czech Republic. He’ll be out of country until early January, though it’s possible he’ll only miss one regular season game, Yale’s Jan. 3 contest at New Hampshire.