The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Quinnipiac learns path to begin NCAA title defense
To defend its championship and reach its fourth Frozen Four, Quinnipiac’s men’s hockey team will need to take an awfully familiar route to the one it took to its first Frozen Four.
The Bobcats will be the third seed in the Providence, R.I., region at Amica Mutual Pavilion and meet Wisconsin on Friday at 5:30 p.m. (ESPNews).
Top overall seed Boston College meets CCHA champion Michigan Tech in the regional’s other game. The winner of Sunday’s regional final (4 p.m., ESPNU) moves on to the Frozen Four in St. Paul, Minn., April 11-13.
Quinnipiac’s first regional championship came in Providence in 2013, when the arena was called the Dunkin’ Donuts
Center. The regional final was also March 31, also Easter Sunday; the Bobcats beat Union 5-1 that day on the way to the national championship game and a loss to Yale.
The school also reached the Frozen Four in 2016, falling to North Dakota in the national final in Tampa, Fla. The Bobcats returned to Tampa last spring and beat Minnesota 10 seconds into overtime for the national championship.
Quinnipiac comes into the national tournament at 26-9-2 after bowing out of the ECAC tournament in the semifinals on Friday, losing 3-0 to St. Lawrence. (Cornell won the conference’s automatic bid on Saturday and will play at Springfield, Mass, against Maine on Thursday.)
Wisconsin is 26-11-2. The Badgers were the second seed in the Big 10 but lost to Ohio State in a three-game quarterfinal series in the conference tournament.
Senior forward Mathieu De St. Phalle, who grew up in Greenwich, has 11 goals and 27 points for the Badgers.
The schools have not met since October 2004, when Quinnipiac was two years away from joining the ECAC. The Badgers swept two games in Madison, 2-1 in overtime and 4-1.
Boston College (31-5-1), on the other hand, is more familiar: The teams have met six times since 2016, and until this year, Quinnipiac hadn’t lost.
The Bobcats have opened each of the past three seasons against B.C.
This year’s was Oct. 7 in Hamden, and Boston College won 2-1 on sophomore Cutter Gauthier’s overtime goal, the first of his NCAA-leading 34 this season.
The Eagles (31-5-1) were a unanimous No. 1 in both national polls even before beating Boston University 6-2 for the Hockey East championship on Saturday.
The teams met in the 2016 national semifinals
Fairfield’s Charlie Leddy, a New Jersey Devils draft pick, is a sophomore defenseman for Boston College. Paul Davey of Greenwich is a sophomore forward.
Michigan Tech (19-14-6) has won seven of its past eight, including all four in the CCHA tournament, to qualify for the NCAAs. The Huskies have reached the NCAA tournament three years in a row.