How Quinnipiac University Became A Men’s College Hockey Power, Advanced To Frozen Four

Forget the $6,700 salary. Or the part-time position. Or the midnight practices.

Rand Pecknold was thrilled when Quinnipiac University hired him as its men’s hockey coach in May 1994. After all, Pecknold, who was 27 at the time, had previously coached as an assistant for three seasons at Connecticut College, where he had been a standout player. Hockey was in his blood.

Twenty nine years later, Pecknold is still in the same role at Quinnipiac, a Hamden, Conn. college with about 6,000 undergraduate students. But the job title aside, it couldn’t be much more different from the early days.

Pecknold doesn’t have to teach high school history, like he did for his first five years to make ends meet. He doesn’t have to hold practices at times when most people are sleeping. He doesn’t have to coach in Division II in front of small crowds.

On Thursday night in Tampa, Fla., Pecknold will be coaching Quinnipiac against Michigan in the Frozen Four, college hockey’s premier event. The Bobcats may not have the name recognition or longstanding tradition of Michigan, which has won nine national titles, or the other two Frozen Four participants, Minnesota and Boston University, which have won five national titles apiece.

Still, Quinnipiac is no fluke. The Bobcats have played in eight of the past 10 NCAA tournaments, including appearances in the 2013 and 2016 national title games. And Pecknold ranks first among active NCAA Division I coaches and 12th all-time with 613 career victories.

“I think there’s a lot of people that kind of look at who we are and they just
just
sit there and say, ‘How do those guys keep doing it every year?,’” Quinnipiac athletics director Greg Amodio said.

It starts with Pecknold and the University’s financial commitment to hockey.

When Quinnipiac hired Pecknold, the Bobcats were coming off a 6-18 season in which they were outscored by nearly 3.7 goals per game. They practiced at midnight because that was the only available time at the Hamden town rink. And Pecknold spent his days teaching at nearby North Haven High School and late afternoons, evenings and weekends coaching and recruiting. He slept on occasion, too.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Pecknold said. “It was a grind. But my two biggest things when I took over my first year was I gotta get some recruits in because the team hadn’t been very successful in the recent years before I got here. And number two was we got to get a better practice slot. I remember in year two, we got a 9:40 pm slot at another rink. It sounds crazy, but man, it was 100 times better.”

Quinnipiac’s transformation under Pecknold did not occur overnight. The Bobcats went 6-15-1, 11-12-4 and 13-12-2 in his first three seasons before breaking through with a 19-3-1 record during the 1997-98 season. The next season, they joined Division 1 as members of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), and the school made Pecknold’s position full-time, meaning he earned enough money to quit his teaching job.

Quinnipiac was among the MAAC’s premier programs and won the conference championship in 2002 to qualify for its first NCAA tournament. Still, the Bobcats faced challenges such as not having their own rink.

“That’s a big deterrent,” Pecknold said. “Not having your own rink or having a bad rink is a big deterrent in recruiting….Kids want to go play in a nice facility. They want to have a nice locker room, they want a good weight room, they want to travel well.”

The University’s leaders, led by then-President John Lahey, recognized the sub-par facilities and began a years-long fundraising and development campaign in the early 2000s to fix the problem. That commitment was cited as a major reason the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference (ECAC), a prestigious hockey league, accepted Quinnipiac as a member starting with the 2005-06 season.

In January 2007, Quinnipiac opened a 180,000-square-foot, on-campus facility that cost $52 million to build. Now known as M&T Bank Arena, it houses a 3,600-seat basketball court and a 3,400-seat hockey rink as well as locker rooms, a weight training facility and other amenities. It was the first building that opened as part of Quinnipiac’s $360 million project to develop its York Hill campus.

“That changed everything,” Pecknold said of the new arena. “It’s the best rink in the state. It really helped our recruiting.”

In 2013, Quinnipiac won a school-record 30 games and made its second NCAA tournament appearance, losing to Yale, 4-0, in the national title game. Three years later, the Bobcats won 32 games and returned to the title game, where they fell, 5-1, to North Dakota in Tampa.

This week, they are back at the Frozen Four in Tampa, staying at the same hotel and trying to win their first NCAA championship.

Quinnipiac (32-4-3) is the tournament’s No. 2 overall seed, has the most victories of any team in the country and has gone 14-1 since losing consecutive road games on Jan. 20 and 21 to ECAC rivals Cornell and Colgate. The Bobcats won their first two NCAA tournament games last weekend by wide margins, defeating Merrimack, 5-0, and Ohio State, 4-1, in front of pro-Quinnipiac crowds at Total Mortgage Arena in Bridgeport, Conn., about a half-hour from campus.

On Thursday night, Quinnipiac plays No. 3 seed Michigan, the team that eliminated the Bobcats from last season’s NCAA tournament. The Wolverines are 26-11-3 and the No. 3 seed, but they are arguably the nation’s most talented team.

Michigan’s roster features four players who have already been first round NHL draft picks: defenseman Luke Hughes and forward Mackie Samoskevich, who were the No. 4 and No. 24 selections in 2021, and forwards Frank Nazar III and Rutger McGroarty, who were the No. 13 and 14 picks last year. Eight other players have also been drafted. And freshman center Adam Fantilli, one of three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award and the nation’s leading scorer, is projected as the No. 2 pick in June’s draft, while freshman forward Gavin Brindley is a projected first or second round pick this year.

Quinnipiac, meanwhile, only has three NHL draft picks on its roster: forward Skyler Brind’Amour, a sixth round selection in 2017; backup goalie Chase Clark, a sixth round pick in 2021; and forward Sam Lipkin, a seventh round pick in 2021. Pecknold does not expect anyone on his team to be chosen in this year’s draft.

The discrepancy is not unusual. While most other top-tier programs are filled with elite NHL prospects, Quinnipiac has never had a first round NHL draft pick and only had one second round pick and two third round picks.

Colorado Avalanche defenseman Devon Toews, a fourth round pick in 2014, and Boston Bruins defenseman Connor Clifton, a fifth round pick in 2013, are the only former Quinnipiac players who are currently full-time NHL players. A few others split time between the NHL and American Hockey League.

“We win because of our culture,” Pecknold said. “We have this phenomenal culture. We recruit high character, high hockey IQ kids that come in and they’re very selfless. We play a really good team game. We’re very detailed. And that allows us to compete with the Michigans and Minnesotas of the world.”

That’s not to say Quinnipiac doesn’t have some All-American-caliber players. The Bobcats had two players among the 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker award, college hockey’s version of the Heisman Trophy: forward Collin Graf, a transfer from Union College who’s third in the nation with 56 points (20 goals and 36 assists) in his first season with Quinnipiac, and goalie Yaniv Perets, who leads the nation with a 1.463 goals against average. They also have numerous older players who set a standard on and off the ice.

“The beautiful thing for me as an administrator is not so much to watch the coaches teach the first years and the transfers what we’re all about,” said Amodio, who became athletics director in 2015. “The upperclassmen are the ones who get them to understand that this is the way we conduct ourselves, this is the way we do business and this is what we’re all about as a hockey program. When you develop that kind of culture, then you’re able to have that success year over year.”

Amodio compares the men’s hockey program at Quinnipiac to the men’s basketball program at Gonzaga, a small University with about 4,900 undergraduates that has succeeded at a high level for a long time. Gonzaga has made the NCAA men’s basketball tournament every year since 1999 and finished in the top 10 of the final Associated Press poll for seven consecutive years.

Like Gonzaga with basketball, Quinnipiac has made it a priority to invest in hockey, and the fans have taken notice. Quinnipiac has a 300- to 400-person waiting list for season tickets at its home arena, which is almost always filled to capacity, and sold out its allotment of 600 tickets for the Frozen Four. Hundreds of more Quinnipiac supporters are making the trip to Tampa, too.

The Bobcats aren’t satisfied with the status quo, though. Quinnipiac is set to begin a renovation of the hockey locker room and lounges, and alumni and donors are planning to create a name, image and likeness program for hockey players, according to Amodio, who added that he has “ongoing conversations” with Pecknold about the program.

Through the years, numerous colleges have approached Pecknold about coaching jobs. Each time, he has said no.

“I’ve considered (other jobs), but my wife and I love where we live and our four kids (ages 9, 14, 16 and 17) are settled,” he said. “Quinnipiac is a great place to work. I’ve definitely looked at opportunities, but sometimes I’m like, ‘The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence.’ I’ve got a great job, I’ve got a great situation and my family is in a great situation.”