Behind freshman Dan Clarke’s 29-save performance in his first collegiate start, the Quinnipiac University Bobcats took a 4-2 decision over the No. 11 Air Force Falcons in the Championship game of the 16th annual UConn Hockey Classic at the Mark Edward Freitas Ice Forum.<\/p>\n
“It was a great surprise,” said Associate Head Coach Ben Syer. “It’s a good night to start your college career against the 11th-ranked team in the nation.”<\/p>\n
The Bobcats (9-6-1) drew an early penalty and had numerous chances with the man advantage. Air Force’s Andrew Volkening stood strong in net and prevented the Bobcats from taking an early lead.<\/p>\n
With less than 20 seconds remaining in the first period, the Bobcats broke out from behind their net for a final rush. David Marshall carried the puck through the neutral zone and fed Bryan Leitch the pass. Leitch controlled the puck and fed a streaking Eric Lampe for the one-timer goal with six seconds remaining in the first.<\/p>\n
“It’s always nice to beat a nationally-ranked team,” said Syer. “They are a competitive team. It gives the guys something to spring board into the second half of the season with the win.”<\/p>\n
Quinnipiac took a two-goal lead when Marshall received a pass in the slot from Leitch and deked around Volkening and slid the puck along the ice and into the net midway through the second. It was Marshall’s team-leading ninth goal of the year.<\/p>\n
“Leitch played well,” said Syer “He back checked well and was committed to playing defense this weekend.”<\/p>\n
The goal was Marshall’s 100th career point as a Bobcat. He is the 10th player at Quinnipiac to reach 60 goals, the fourth at Division I. He 28th all-time to reach 100 points and 15th at the D-I level.<\/p>\n
The Bobcats took a three-goal lead with Lampe’s second goal of the game. Lampe received a one-timer pass from Spencer Heichman behind the net and beat Volkening far side under the crossbar.<\/p>\n
With 8:52 remaining Greg Burgdoefer was penalized with a five minute major for boarding and a game misconduct. After the initial call Brandon Wong was called for holding and then Andrew Meyer was called for roughing putting the Falcons (14-3-1) on a four-on-three advantage.<\/p>\n
Air Force capitalized on the opportunity with a goal by Jeff Hajner. Matt Fairchild took a pass from Greg Flynn that he sent over to Hajner for the blast past Quinnipiac’s Dan Clarke at 11:40.<\/p>\n
The Falcons scored a second power-play goal with 2:37 to go, then pulled Volkening in favor of the extra attacker. That paid off for Quinnipiac when Matt Sorteberg added an empty-net goal with 1:22 remaining to seal the championship.<\/p>\n
Leitch, Lampe, Clarke, UConn’s Justin Hernandez, Merrimack’s Fraser Allan and Air Force’s Flynn were named to the All-Tournament team, with MVP honors going to Leitch.<\/p>\n
The Bobcats return to action Friday evening hosting Harvard while Air Force will play UConn on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Behind freshman Dan Clarke’s 29-save performance in his first collegiate start, the Quinnipiac University Bobcats took a 4-2 decision over the No. 11 Air Force Falcons in the Championship game of the 16th annual UConn Hockey Classic at the Mark Edward Freitas Ice Forum. “It was a great surprise,” said Associate Head Coach Ben Syer. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9264"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}