Dutchmen drop out of first place

Box Score

by Ryan Fay

Fourth-ranked Union opened the second half of its schedule on a down note, dropping a 2-1 decision at seventh-ranked Quinnipiac on Friday night at the High Point Solutions Arena in Hamden, Connecticut.

The loss snapped Union's ten game unbeaten streak and marked the Dutchmen's first road loss of the season.

With the loss, Union (12-4-3 overall, 8-2-0 ECAC) fell to second place in the ECAC standings. Quinnipiac (16-3-5, 7-2-3) moved into first place by one point, but the Dutchmen have two games in hand on the Bobcats.

Quinnipiac dominated the faceoff battle, winning 48 of 68 draws with Connor Jones leading the way at 21-5. Union was without center Michael Vecchione, its top faceoff weapon at 54.6%. He didn't make the trip due to an undisclosed reason.

Both Bobcat goals came off faceoff victories.

“The story of the game tonight was faceoff losses – the one-on-one battles,” said Union head coach Rick Bennett. “I thought they (Quinnipiac) just wanted it a little bit more tonight, give them credit. That’s a huge part of the game and they won because of it.”

After a scoreless first period, Quinnipiac opened the scoring at 6:48 of the second. Tim Clifton won a faceoff back to Jordan Samuels-Thomas at the top of the circle. Samuels-Thomas, a 2009 Winnipeg Jets draftee, then fired the puck past Union goaltender Colin Stevens to give the Bobcats a 1-0 lead.

Union evened the score at 4:01 of the third when Mark Bennett deflected a Jeff Taylor point shot for his second goal of the season.

But the momentum was short lived as the Bobcats regained the lead just under a minute later. Samuels-Thomas won a draw back to Alex Barron at the point. Bryce Van Brabant tipped Barron's shot past Stevens, who finished with 26 saves in his first loss in his last ten starts.

Bennett pulled Stevens for the extra attacker with two minutes left, but Union couldn't get one past Quinnipiac netminder Michael Garteig, who ended with 27 stops and helped hold Union to a season-low one goal.

Union's power play, which entered play third in the country at 25.3%, came up short in all four tries against Quinnipiac's top-ranked penalty kill (92.2%).

The Dutchmen penalty kill, which had struggled in recent games, went 4-for-4 in the losing effort.

Union will have little time to rest with a 4 p.m. tilt on Saturday at Princeton. The Tigers got past Rensselaer, 2-1, on Friday.

End notes:

Cole Ikkala returned after missing the past five games.... Vecchione and Sam Coatta missed their first games of the season... neither made the trip for undisclosed reasons... an archived stream of the game can be seen here.

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