by Cameron Levasseur/CHN Reporter
LAKE PLACID, N.Y. Quinnipiac’s Sam Lipkin shakes his head in disbelief. CJ McGee tries to break his stick against his knee, then puts it over his head in frustration. Iivari Rasanen sits on the edge of the boards and stares down into the abyss.
A couple steps and a pane of glass away, there’s pandemonium. Tomáš Mazura runs down the bench, hugging every red and white sweater in sight. He opened the scoring in the for St. Lawrence an hour earlier to break open the first ECAC Semifinal. It was the only goal the Saints needed.
They hung a 3-0 shutout on Quinnipiac — the first time the Bobcats have been blanked in the postseason in more than six years.
Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold waits in the wings as the victor’s press conference drags on. It’s a familiar wait. For the fourth-consecutive year the Bobcats entered championship weekend as the No. 1 seed and left empty handed.
He takes the podium wearing the same tie and the same expression as the previous years.
“Honestly, I’m embarrassed,” Pecknold said. “As a staff, or myself personally, we take a lot of pride in being one of the best coached teams in the nation. I think that’s why we win … give St. Lawrence credit, I don’t want to take anything away from them, but I’m embarrassed right now. We’ve got to figure it out.”
Jayden Lee, the team’s captain, stares above the sea of heads. The season’s not over, but it sure feels like it is.
“They just outcompeted us,” Lee says. “They were more detailed.”
The Saints — who were five games below .500 coming into the game — shut down the nation’s fourth-best offense, a group that scored eight goals on them three weeks prior.
“Their top two lines combined had 90 goals,” St. Lawrence head coach Brent Brekke said. “I don’t think we had 90 goals as a team this year.”
The Bobcats had chances. There were several 2-on-1s, a handful of point-blank shots from the slot, a fumbled puck that they couldn’t put in an empty net. The team’s often effortless cohesion just disappeared.
“(That was) part of the problem all night, we kind of went rogue a little bit in a lot of situations and that’s not what we’re about,” Pecknold said. “We’re about our identity…
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