NCAA Frozen Four preview: Can top seed Quinnipiac conquer history?

It wasn't that all long ago the Quinnipiac Bobcats were barely a team at all. They existed as a Division II program from 1975 to 1998, but Division II hockey effectively stopped existing as a thing the NCAA recognizes as a championship sport in the mid-1980s, and came back for a brief run in the '90s. There hasn't been a Division II title awarded since 1999.

But Quinnipiac got out just in time, elevating to Division I in 1998-99. At that point, the three opponents they could potentially face in this year's Frozen Four — Boston College, Denver and North Dakota — had won nearly 1 in every 4 national titles ever awarded, going back to 1948 (12 of 51). Since then, those three programs have only added to their legacy, with North Dakota winning in 2000, Denver capturing two in a row in 2004 and 2005, and BC knocking down four titles since 2001, including three from 2008 to 2012.

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The Eagles have been to 25 Frozen Fours, a national record. The Fighting Hawks aren't far behind at 22. The Pioneers bring up the rear at 15, “only” the sixth-most in the country.

By contrast, Quinnipiac has no national titles, and is making just its second Frozen Four appearance ever.

So while the Bobcats might be a relatively small player historically, they've come to take on a massive role in the last few years. Behind newly crowned national Coach of the Year Rand Pecknold, who has been with the team since late in its Div. II days, the Bobcats are a juggernaut. This is the fifth straight season in which they've won at least 20 games — typically a pretty good indicator of being a very good team — the fourth straight year of making the NCAA tournament, and the second time in four years they've at least 30.

They are the national No. 1 seed for the second time. But the last time they made it this far, it was against a field of teams that had never been to the Frozen Four before, let alone won a national title. St. Cloud State, UMass Lowell, and Yale are all good programs these days, but they don't attract the talent of BC, North Dakota, or Denver.

Consequently, it might be fair to argue that Quinnipiac is the first program to have some real sustained success with “outside the box” recruiting efforts. Over the past 10 years or so, Pecknold has developed a bit of a recruiting pipeline into the BCHL, with 13 of his current roster players coming out of that league. That includes starting goaltender Michael Garteig (.926), senior forward Travis St. Denis (second on the team in both goals and points), junior defenseman Devon Toews (one of just two players on the team to have been drafted by an NHL club), and a number of other guys filling big roles for the club.

These guys tend to be a little older than the guys with clear NHL prospects on Jerry York's, Brad Berry's, or Jim Montgomery's teams, but Pecknold is a master coach who has developed a system that drives huge possession numbers and has players who can play it to perfection. He finds “his” guys gets them to play “his” way, and the results speak for themselves. In all situations over the past four years, Quinnipiac has been incredible.

If you can control 58-plus percent of shots and almost 63 percent of goals, you are a monster team, flat-out. Which explains why the team is 84-3-5 over the last four seasons when entering the third period with a lead, and hasn't lost in such a situation in two-plus years.

The big question for the club, though, is whether leading scorer Sam Anas — a former USHL player! — is actually healthy. He played through a bum shoulder at the regionals a week and a half ago and collected an assist and a goal against RIT and Lowell, respectively. The goal in particular was off-the-charts spectacular, against one of the best goalies in the country. And that's after he wasn't even shooting the puck in warmups for his last two games.

If Anas is anything close to 100 percent, that should be fantastic news, and strike fear into the hearts of opponents.

None of that, by the way, is to discount the quality of the other teams in this field. They play Hockey East regular-season champion Boston College in the first semifinal, a team that's deep at every position and loaded with draft picks, and carrying the best goalie in the country. And while they can be suffocating defensively and dazzling in attack, the word I would use to describe the Eagles this season is “mean.” They play a very physical brand of hockey, which doesn't bode well for Anas or indeed the rest of Quinnipiac. On average, the Bobcats are about a year and a half older, but BC's everyday lineup is bigger and heavier by a decent enough margin that there should be some room to impose their physical will.

That creates room for drafted, skilled forwards like Ryan Fitzgerald, Colin White, Zach Sanford, Miles Wood, Alex Tuch, and Adam Gilmour to create plenty of offense in attack. And it makes opponents think twice about getting cute as they cross the blue line against Ian McCoshen, Steve Santini, Casey Fitzgerald, and Scott Savage. And even if you deal with all of that, Thatcher Demko (.936, .941 at 5-on-5) is waiting at the back to snuff out most scoring chances with aplomb.

It's a scary, deep team, but it's one that's run into some difficulties before, such as bombing out of the Hockey East tournament in the semifinals after barely getting past lowly Vermont the previous round.

And the winner of that game will have the unenviable task of facing the winner of North Dakota/Denver in the national championship game on Saturday.

They played five times this season, and each swept their home series. The rubber match was a 1-1 tie in the NCHC third-place game. What do two teams that played each other five times and wrestled to a season draw have to hide from each other? How is there anything left up their sleeves at all?

One must point out here that for the season series, North Dakota holds a number of very slight edges. They scored three goals a game to Denver's 2.4, and racked up 166 shots and only allowed 114 (a sizable edge of 33.2-22.8 per game).

Now, Denver had the better shooting luck, but that's not something you can go around expecting in any given game, especially against North Dakota. As I've said many times before, team talent level drives percentages in the college game to a signficant extent; not all the time, but good teams tend to have more apparent luck shooting the puck. To that end, it's noteworthy that North Dakota's team shooting success (11.1 percent) was fifth in the nation this year, while Denver's was 12th at 10.5 percent. Both are very good, but the Fighting Hawks have a noticeable edge, as you'd expect given how many drafted players they carry.

Meanwhile, though, if the edge in this game comes down to anything, it's probably goaltending quality. Cam Johnson is a .934 goaltender this season and a Mike Richter Award finalist for a reason. Denver, though, hasn't really settled on anyone all season, with Tanner Jaillet playing just 67 percent of the team's minutes. He has a .923 save percentage on the year, which is certainly respectable, but conceded five goals on just 42 shots in the regional against BU and Ferris State. Fortunately, the team scored 13(!) goals in front of him, so it didn't much matter.

Both these games feel like coin flips, and that's because all four teams are very good and well-balanced against each other's strengths and weaknesses. If nothing else, these should be two excellent games that give way to an excellent final. It's very possible that Quinnipiac takes the whole thing and wins its first national title. It might even be the most likely outcome. But the old guard doesn't give access to its exclusive club happily or generously.

For Pecknold and his Bobcats, this should be a slog.

Frozen Four schedule

THURSDAY

Quinnipiac vs. Boston College at 5 p.m., ESPN2 / TSN2

North Dakota vs. Denver at 8:30 p.m., ESPN2 / TSN2

FRIDAY

Hobey Baker Award ceremony, 6 p.m., NHL Network

SATURDAY

National championship game, 8 p.m., ESPN2 / TSN4

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