The moment for which Rand Pecknold will long be remembered in Connecticut, the decision at the culmination of a long and remarkable coaching odyssey, was there to be made.
And Rand Pecknold made it. He didn’t lead Quinnipiac all the way to the brink of a national men’s hockey championship by playing it safe, and there was no being cautious Saturday night with 3:28 remaining and a goal so desperately needed to keep hope flickering.
Pecknold, known to be aggressive in pulling his goalie, did it here, with 30 seconds left in a power play. One bad bounce of the puck on the softening ice and Minnesota, the top-ranked team in the nation, could have easily put the game out of reach with an empty-netter.
“I almost did it earlier,” Pecknold said told reporters at Amalie Arena in Tampa Fla. “As we all know, I like to pull the goalie. I just feel like you’re going to wait a little bit, go 6-on-5. Why not do it 6-on-4? Especially with an O-zone draw, you probably need possession as we got. And we practice it.”
So Pecknold rolled the dice, a “riverboat gambler” they called him on ESPN, and eventually came home from the NCAA Frozen Four with a national championship for Quinnipiac, the team he took over as a part-time coach, a program then struggling to compete in Division II, and built into a force that can recruit anywhere in the world and skate toe-to-toe, year-after-year, with college hockey’s perennial powerhouses.
The Bobcats didn’t score with the two-skater advantage, but at 6-on-5 they continued to pepper Minnesota’s goalie with shots and Collin Graf poked in the puck to tie the game with 2:47 left.
“If you watch that goal,” Pecknold said, “we score that goal because Sam Lipkin is doing exactly what he’s told to do. He’s hiding off the back post. And the goalie knows that. And he cheats the pass. And Graffer beats him with the five-holer.”
It was a gutsy decision, but Pecknold put his faith in the players who bought into his system, got to work early last summer and played his way. He trusted Skyler Brind’Amour to win one more face-off and keep the pick in Minnesota’s end.
With all the momentum now, the Bobcats finished the job just 10 seconds into the overtime. Lipkin, the freshman, again got a drawn-up play started, and Jacob Quillan, who won the initial face-off, got the puck through the chaos in front of goalie Justen Close to win the championship. Quinnipiac 3, Minnesota 2.
“It’s assertive play,” Quillan said. “We take pride in being detailed in the dot. We’re detailed in the dot.”
When it was over, the normally poker-faced Pecknold was overcome with emotion, asking ESPN sideline reporter Colby Cohen for a hug. Like one of Pecknold’s players, Cohen did as he was instructed.
“I was trying to keep it together on the ice and not cry,” Pecknold said. “Again, you can’t put a value on it. You just can’t. It’s awesome.”
Few coaches can claim the pride in ownership of a championship that Rand Pecknold, 56, could as he and his team boarded their plane Sunday morning and journeyed home to Hamden, one of the country’s oldest true hockey towns, and Connecticut, which can bill itself as the state of champions, state of the art in both men’s basketball and hockey.
Pecknold played Division III hockey at Connecticut College, and when he got into coaching, it was as an assistant at his alma mater and soccer at New London High. When he got the job at Quinnipiac in 1994, taking over for Jim Armstrong, an old New Haven Blades legend, it was a part-time position paying $6,700 annually, according to a recent Forbes profile. Pecknold taught at North Haven High, his day job. His games and practices at Hamden High’s rink were late nights, early mornings.
“(A championship) wasn’t even a thought,” Pecknold said. “It was a grind. My life was 12-hour increments. We practiced at midnight. I had a teaching job. I’d get home from school, my job, I’d sleep 3 to 6 p.m. I’d get up. I had to go recruit because we weren’t very good. I didn’t have enough players. We practiced at midnight. I was just in survival mode.”
But he was young and he recruited and built tirelessly. With the support of an school administration daring to be ambitious and seeing the potential identity in hockey, Quinnipiac moved to Division I, then to the ECAC, and into its new arena.
Along the way, Pecknold, who won his 600th game in January, grew as a coach and learned how to build a roster, not necessarily with the best talent – the champs have a relatively low number of three NHL Draft picks on the roster – but with hungry players who buy in, accept coaching, work on all the details.
He learned perspective, too, when his wife, Nikki, escaped 7 World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. She had been in an elevator when the planes hit across the street, and the seconds ticked by like hours, for hours, that awful day until Rand leaned his wife was safe. A few months later, Quinnipiac played in an NCAA Tournament for the first time, and has been back eight times since, losing the championship game to Yale in 2013 and to North Dakota in 2016, and she was in the arena with him Saturday.
When Minnesota, the No.1 seed, took a 2-0 lead Saturday, it looked like Quinnipiac would be denied one more time, but the Gophers, who hadn’t lost a third-period lead all season, laid back in a defensive posture and Quinnipiac attacked, attacked, attacked, gaining an 11-6 edge in shots in the second period, and 14-2 in the third.
Pecknold, in his blue suit, his Quinnipiac-gold tie and the matching gold pocket square WTNH-TV’s Rich Coppola stuck in his jacket for luck last season, stayed calmly determined, as did his team. Christophe Tellier scored the first goal.
“Then we started to believe,” Pecknold said. “And I thought our culture was, again, on full display in the third period. I mean, I don’t know what the shots were. But we wanted it. I’m so proud of these guys. We talk a lot about culture and character. But there was a lot of belief in the third period. We were so positive. And we just felt like we were going to score. We were going to tie it and we were going to win this game.”
Now, Pecknold and what he has built is on top of the college hockey world. The Bobcats (34-4-3) rose to No.1 in the rankings during the season. In the NCAA Tournament, Quinnipiac beat Ohio State, Michigan and Minnesota, which still sounds absurd, given the sheer resources Big Ten schools can pour into any sport.
“So you can’t even believe where we were,” Pecknold said. “Some of the guys were here tonight from that first team. It’s incredible to do what we’ve done and be where we are.”
