A year after the disappointment of a Frozen Four held in Boston without a single New England team participating, the region will have a pair of national championship hopefuls playing on the final weekend of the Division 1 men’s college hockey season.
Both regional brackets based in the region had local teams — Boston University (Manchester, N.H.) and Quinnipiac (Bridgeport, Conn.) — punch their tickets to Tampa. As a result, the Frozen Four field will feature a pair of New England teams for only the second time since 2017.
On April 6, BU will face top-seeded Minnesota (5 p.m.) and Quinnipiac will take on Michigan (8:30 p.m.) in the semifinal games at Amalie Arena.
Here are five reasons why the Terriers and Bobcats advanced to the Frozen Four:
1. Experience
Being led by 11 seniors and graduate students is rare for a Boston University program that has churned out dozens of NHL players, but it is no surprise to see a team with that level of experience emerge after winning the Hockey East regular-season and tournament titles for the first time since the Terriers’ last Frozen Four trip in 2015.
Of course, the group is led by a UMass Lowell transfer Matt Brown (16 goals, 45 points), but 19 players have scored goals this season, including nine during the postseason. Especially at this time of year, that level of experience is invaluable.
“I’m fortunate with the group I inherited, an older team that you don’t typically have at BU,” first-year head coach Jay Pandolfo (Burlington, Mass.) said. “A lot of guys that came back motivated to do well (along with) some young freshmen that have come in and really contributed. It’s a credit to the guys buying in.”
For Quinnipiac, a handful of seniors, including former All-American defenseman Zach Metsa, returned for their graduate year and have helped the Bobcats win 28 games despite falling short of the ECAC Hockey title. Ethan de Jong is the eldest of seven double-digit goal scorers, but sophomore Collin Graf (Lincoln, Mass.) has topped the list with 20 goals and 56 points.
This will be Quinnipiac’s second trip to a Frozen Four in Tampa, as Rand Pecknold’s (Bedford, N.H.) team fell to North Dakota in the 2016 title game.
“I think there are a lot of similarities,” Pecknold said Sunday. “For us to win, we need to have high-character, high-IQ players. We have that again — not even high character, elite character. It’s a special group and they just buy into what we need to do to beat teams on a regular basis that probably have more talent than us.”
2. Strong goaltending
Unlike the Merrimack team that both BU and Quinnipiac have seen in recent weeks, there is no doubt about the goaltender who will stand between the pipes in Tampa.
BU’s Drew Commesso and Quinnipiac’s Yaniv Perets have played the majority of minutes this season and were the Most Outstanding Players during NCAA regional play.
Perets is the backstop of a Bobcat team that leads the country in scoring margin (plus-2.41) and takes nearly 11 more shots per game than its opponents, but he had one of his busiest games of the season in the regional against Ohio State, making 34 saves. He stopped 49 of the 50 shots he faced over the two games in Bridgeport.
“He's a big-time goalie, Richter finalist, Hobey Baker finalist, and he was excellent (in Sunday’s game) as we expect him to be every night,” Pecknold said. “I thought we did a nice job in front of him in the end defensively.”
Commesso, meanwhile, has led the way in all of BU’s nine consecutive victories since Feb. 18, giving the Terriers the longest winning streak in the country.
“I kind of view every game is the same, and it doesn’t really matter the stage for me,” Commesso said. “I still have the same job whether I’m in practice or in a game like today. I have the simplest job in the world to just stop the puck. … I’m going to continue doing that moving forward because every game the rest of the year is going to be big.”
The local St. Sebastian’s product also has Olympic experience, having become the youngest goaltender to start a game for the United States last February.
3. Tested teams
After convincing wins in their opening regional games (BU 5, Western Michigan 1; Quinnipiac 5, Merrimack 0), both teams had to claw their way to another victory.
The Terriers played stifling defense limiting Cornell to just 14 shots in Saturday’s 2-1 win, while Quinnipiac overcame a rough start and early deficit — with the help of some individual SportsCenter Top 10-worthy brilliance from sophomore Cristophe Tellier — to beat Ohio State 4-1 the following day.
https://twitter.com/qu_mih/status/1640363905989087232?s=46&t=-ITCFzD1tjxptJdDKS3-zg
Though Quinnipiac’s run through the ECAC regular season was often easier, its experienced lineup has all been through the battles of a tournament run before. The Bobcats were the closest New England team to the Frozen Four last year before losing to Michigan in the Allentown (Pa.) Regional.
“Just take it one step at a time in tournaments like this,” senior forward Joey Cipollone said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure, a lot of high-stakes moments, and for us, the focus was just kind of taking it one step at a time, especially with a lot of media timeouts, just a lot of resets.”
ROAD TO TAMPA: 3 takeaways from BU's win to advance to the Frozen Four
BU can also draw upon the experience of playing two overtime games in the Hockey East semifinals and championship against Providence and Merrimack respectively and winning in three other extra sessions during the regular season.
The freshman duo of Lane and Quinn Hutson have combined to score 12 of the team’s game-winning goals, including one apiece to claim the conference title.
“I think (the close games at TD Garden) helped us,” Pandolfo said before the regional in Manchester. “We played from behind, I don’t think we had a lead the whole tournament. I don’t think that’s a great recipe, but it does help your team believe in themselves (and) believe that we’re not out of the game.”
4. BU’s dynamo on defense
You can’t talk about BU’s success without bringing up Lane Hutson, the Hockey East Rookie of the Year whose 48 points are the most by a freshman in the conference’s single-season history. Previously, no defenseman had ever led Hockey East in scoring.
Hutson is also the lone blueliner among the 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, which has not been won by a freshman since former Terrier Jack Eichel in 2015.
https://twitter.com/TeamECH/status/1638976915821457409?s=20
“I believe we’ve got a great group here, great coaches,” Hutson said recently. “It’s honestly been pretty easy on me. I’m just kind of playing my game.”
Alongside senior captain Domenick Fensore, Hutson has played an even more important role on the back end since senior Case McCarthy went down and was stretchered off the ice during the third period of the Hockey East semifinal game.
5. Young guns for Bobcats
As experienced as Quinnipiac is, some of its top contributors are still underclassmen. Graf, a sophomore, is shining in his first playoff experience after transferring from Union.
The team’s third point-per-game player alongside Graf and de Jong is freshman Sam Lipkin, who became the first Bobcat rookie to post a three-point NCAA tournament game with a goal and two assists against Merrimack. He is also one of the team’s six players with a rating above plus-25, further proving the team’s offensive talent and high responsibility. The center of the top line is sophomore Jacob Quillan, a Salisbury School product with five game-winning tallies to his name.
THE BOBCATS: How Quinnipiac muscled its way into the Frozen Four
While the offense has a mix of class years, Quinnipiac’s defense is led by an experienced core that includes Perets in goal, Metsa and a pair of graduate transfers in Jake Johnson (RPI) and Jacob Nordqvist (Lake Superior State)
