The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
From UMass to QU, Chau still No. 1
On a new team, in a new conference, Oliver Chau finds himself right where he finished last season: on the No. 1 team in men’s college hockey.
A national champion with UMass nine months ago, Chau and Quinnipiac are unbeaten in the past 16 games and moved into the top spot in both national polls this week.
“What I thought was really special about that group last year was maturity,” Chau said. “We had a lot of older guys who’d been on the team awhile. Even how mature the younger guys were, how quickly they got up to speed.
“Here, it’s an older team at Quinnipiac, with the grad transfers (he’s one of five) and seniors. Even the younger players, a credit to the culture, everybody’s very mature.”
The Bobcats’ only loss came in the back end of a split in Hamden with thenNo. 6 North Dakota. That made them 3-1-1; they’re 17-1-3 now after Tuesday’s 9-0 win over Princeton heading into a road weekend at Colgate and No. 9/10 Cornell.
Chau has 21 points, a tiebreaker off Ethan de Jong’s team lead.
“As a person, I’d say he’s got A-plus character,” Bobcats coach Rand Pecknold said, adding later that Chau may have even exceeded the scouting report in that regard. “He’s a special human being. That obviously makes him a great teammate.
“As a player, he’s about as complete as any player I’ve ever had in terms of playing 200 feet . ... He always does the right thing, playing offense or defense.”
Pecknold began the year with Chau, Wyatt Bongiovanni and de Jong together on a loaded line.
“It was good, but it wasn’t great,” Pecknold said.
The Bobcats moved Chau to a line with Skyler Brind’Amour and Guus van Nes in late November.
“Brind’Amour and van Nes have been solid, but Chau elevated that line,” Pecknold said.
There was, Chau said, a transition period when he first arrived.
“When we started playing games, the systems become second nature as you open up and play, add your own element to the game. I hope I’ve got the
systems down,” he said with a laugh.”
Chau, 24, is listed at 5foot-9 and 164 pounds. Undersized as a youngster in Ontario, he knew the major-junior route wasn’t likely, and his parents wanted him to get an education. He studied finance at UMass and is pursuing an MBA at Quinnipiac.
He played three years of prep-school hockey and a year in Alberta junior hockey before going to Amherst, where last year, amid pandemic hockey, masks and distancing, “we focused on unity,” Chau said. With all the weirdness, they wanted to make sure their time together was quality time.
A shootout loss to Maine in their regular-season finale reminded them of a playoff loss from a few years earlier.
“The feeling in the room was we had to face some adversity there,” Chau said.
They went on to win Hockey East and the NCAA championship.
In a week, the Bobcats go to Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport for the second Connecticut Ice tournament. Sacred Heart, Quinnipiac’s first-round opponent, won it in 2020. The 2021 edition fell victim to the pandemic.
Chau played there in 2021, though. The Minutemen came out of Bridgeport’s NCAA regional in front of a crowd of literal friends and family, with attendance limited to a couple of guests of each traveling-party member.
“It’s more than we had all year,” Chau said: pandemic hockey.
The return will spark some memories, but he has become a part of Quinnipiac’s culture now.
“Here, it’s just how excited everyone is around the rink,” Chau said, “whether it’s practice, a game, a morning skate, a workout. Everyone loves coming to the rink. You can hear it during a lift, the hooting and hollering. You can see it on the ice celebrating goals.
“That’s not to take anything away from UMass. It was kind of similar. But when everyone’s working hard and having fun, it’s the perfect mix.”