MEN’S HOCKEY GAMEDAY
NO. 2 QUINNIPIAC VS. OHIO STATE
When: Sunday, 4 p.m.
Where: Total Mortgage Arena, Bridgeport Records: Quinnipiac 31-4-3; Ohio State 2115-3
TV: ESPN2
PLAYERS TO WATCH
(For skaters, goals-assists-points. For goalies, save percentage/goals-against average)
Quinnipiac: Soph. G Yaniv Perets (.930/ 1.47), Soph. F Collin Graf (20-36-56), Grad. F Ethan de Jong (18-20-38), Grad. D Zach Metsa (8-25-33) Sr. F Skyler Brind’Amour (13-1831). Ohio State: Soph. G Jakub Dobes (.919/ 2.29), Fr. F Stephen Halliday (9-32-41), fifthyear F Jake Wise (12-27-39), Soph. D Mason Lohrei (4-28-32), fifth-year F Gustaf Westlund (2-3-5 in six games).
KEEP AN EYE ON
Lofty goals: Quinnipiac will play in its third men’s hockey regional final in the past four NCAA tournaments on Sunday in Bridgeport.
It’s not quite the four-year stretch the Bobcats had a decade ago that saw them play for the national championship in both 2013 and 2016, but it’s not bad. But their goals are higher, and Ohio State stands in the way of Quinnipiac’s third Frozen Four appearance.
The Buckeyes (21-15-3) and Bobcats (314-3) meet Sunday at 4 p.m. at Total Mortgage Arena. The winner goes to Tampa, Fla., for the national semifinals on April 6 and potentially the title game two days later.
“I mean this program, this team, it means everything,” Bobcats graduate-student forward Michael Lombardi said after Friday’s 5-0 win over Merrimack, in which he scored a back-breaker third goal in the third period.
“I’ve spent a large part of my life playing for coach (Rand Pecknold), and, you know, the one thing you want to do is you want to bring a national championship to Quinnipiac, and I believe that we have the group to do it.”
Quinnipiac is the second-overall seed and ranked third in both national polls. Ohio State is eighth in the polls.
Return engagement: Both times Quinnipiac
has reached the Frozen Four, it has won the national semifinal. But both times, it lost the final.
The first trip was 10 years ago, to Pittsburgh, where the Bobcats beat St. Cloud State but lost to Yale in the championship game. In 2016, in Tampa, they beat Boston College but fell to North Dakota.
There’s plenty of work to do before then, beginning with an Ohio State team that zonked Harvard 8-1 Friday afternoon. (There was a whole lot of zonking going on in the first round: Only one of the eight regional semis was closer than a four-goal game.)
“I’m sure the coaches are gonna be working so hard watching video, probably not sleep in the next couple of nights,” Ohio State centerman Jake Wise said Friday before he knew who the Buckeyes would be playing, “but yeah, I think we’ll be ready. I think our game plan only changed a little bit, but if we play similar to how we played today, I don’t think it really matters who we play.”
Ohio State has plenty of talent, including sophomore defenseman Mason Lohrei, a 2020 second-round Boston Bruins draft pick.Friday marked the return of co-captain Gustaf Westlund, who lost five months to injury.
Quinnipiac has meshed returning standouts like graduate students Zach Metsa and Ethan de Jong, record-setting sophomore goalie Yaniv Perets and seniors Skyler Brind’Amour and Jayden Lee, with newcomers like transfer sophomore Collin Graf (56 points, second in the nation) and freshman Sam Lipkin to create a team that, familiarly, has limited scoring chances against and possessed the puck well.
“I think probably more what we did this week was kind of taking care of ourselves, kind of reloading getting back to what our identity is,” Pecknold said Friday.
“We drifted from that a little bit in the month of February. we still won games in February (8-0, before losing to Colgate in double overtime in the ECAC semifinals on March 17), but we drifted away a little bit, but I thought today was good.”