As someone who loves sports, I have always admired the athletes of sports I have never played. Every sport requires a level of strength, stamina, skill, and mental toughness. Nowhere is this more evident than in the game of hockey. To be able to skate at high rates of speed backwards and forwards while being able to handle a puck with a stick has always fascinated me. Hockey can be played with a physical violence and a graceful beauty. It is part ballet and part car wreck, riding on sheet of ice with only two blades to hold you up.
My co-worker and friend Chris Doyle has been on a pair of skates since he was 6 years old. Chris started by playing mite hockey and eventually moving on to a Junior “A” Canadian league and Club hockey at West Chester University. Chris has great passion in his voice when talking about hockey in the same way I do when talking football. When talking to someone who has an enthusiasm for something it always inspires me to want to learn more about it. I constantly am inquiring to him about the nuances of the game that the casual fan doesn’t see. What are the offensive and defensive strategies? How hockey differs at the youth levels as compared to other sports? What the hell is forechecking? That is why I jumped at the chance when Chris mentioned that he wanted to see Yale/Quinnipiac play at Ingalls Rink in New Haven. This game has become a fierce rivalry over the last 14 seasons and has only intensified as both programs have become top teams in the country.
The Yale Bulldogs and Quinnipiac Bobcats campuses are separated by only 9 miles. In 2006 Quinnipiac moved conferences to the ECAC. Yale and Quinnipiac began to play at least twice a year every year and started a classic instate rivalry. Since then Quinnipiac has dominated the series (22-7-5). The rivalry reached its peak in 2013 with both teams played an unprecedented 4 times that year. Quinnipiac took the first three games, however the Bulldogs claimed the ultimate prize that year defeating the Bobcats 4-0 to win the school’s first National Championship. Quinnipiac would get back to the title game in 2016 and fall short to North Dakota. Losing any championship game is painful but losing the championship to your conference and instate rival digs the knife in a little deeper. I am sure they would gladly trade in all those wins versus Yale to have gotten their hands on that championship trophy. This rivalry has all the right ingredients: proximity, tradition, big wins, and heart breaking losses. This year’s version of the game has both teams in different development stages of their programs. Quinnipiac is ranked 14th in the nation and poised for a NCAA tournament run, while Yale is a young hockey team trying to find their identity with 3 of their 5 leading scorers being underclassmen (3 sophomores and 2 juniors). As the saying goes in rivalry games “you can throw the record book out the window.”
Of course no game is complete in the Traveling Coach world without either a pregame or postgame pairing of sports and food. A 7 pm start time called for a pregame meal before heading off to Ingalls Rink. Unlike tacos and basketball (working on their relationship) hockey and seafood seem like a natural fit. The tossing of some kind of seafood on the ice such as squid or catfish is a tradition in some National Hockey League towns. So I know there has been some dating between seafood and hockey but I am looking to get these two crazy kids married. The site of this engagement took place at Mr. Crab Seafood Restaurant and Bar on Temple Street in downtown New Haven. The casual restaurant bar was set up like a rustic BBQ establishment with wood picnic tables as the main seating area with traditional 2 and 4 top seating on the perimeter of the restaurant. It had all the theme decor of a seafood bar and eatery with fishing nets, street signs with catchy sayings, anchors, and distressed wood paneling on the walls. Chris and I took a seat at a table and quickly received our menus. Having done some advanced scouting prior to our trip I already knew what direction I was going with the menu. However, keeping with tradition I wanted the waitress to make her recommendation on the food. I was happy to see the menu was not diner menu big. If you’re good at what you do, don’t deviate from your strengths, and the 1 page menu highlighted those appropriately. The waitress’s recommendations followed our scouting report to perfection: CT lobster roll and Mr. Crab cakes.
The crab cakes came out first as an appetizer. Three crab cakes were served on a bed of shredded cabbage with a side of tartar sauce. On first look the crab cakes looked to be deep fried. They were advertised by the waitress as not to have bread crumbs in them however the very crispy outside begged to differ. They had decent flavor to them with a crisp outside and some tasty juicy crab on the inside. I prefer my crab cakes to be pan seared on both sides with more lump crab than shredded. These crab cakes were a 3.5 star recruit. A corner who gives a tough appearance on the outside but is soft on the inside. He will play 4 years for you but it won’t be memorable. The CT lobster roll was the main event on this recruiting trip. The lobster roll came out and visually looked like an All-American right from the start. The roll was a traditional Cape Cod bun that was buttered and lightly toasted on the grill. The lobster was plump, perfectly steamed, and lightly tossed in butter. The only criticism I have is my first bite was all bread. The lobster meat needed to be more evenly distributed so you get a tender lobster and crunchy toasted bun with every bite. The CT lobster roll is a 4 star recruit. You fly out west to get this kid and bring him back east. An excellent talent who if he hits the squat rack and distributes that strength evenly is going to be a first round pick in 3 years. We hopped into the car and headed over to Ingalls rink.
As you approach Ingalls rink the first thing you notice is the roof is in the shape of a whale. Opened in 1958 and seating 3,500, people Ingalls rink is affectionately referred to as the “Yale Whale”. The front overhang is where the tale comes out and it is an impressive site. As we walked in Chris said, “This has the look of classic old barn.” The rink had wooden ceilings with excellent lighting that illuminated the freshly zambonied ice. The banners of each East College Athletic Conference team hung from the rafters along with the 2013 National Championship banner. Much to my surprise the seats I bought online were right behind the goal or as Doyle said, “looking right in your living room.” An excellent view to watch a goalie work and physical defensemen crush opposing players on checks. As soon as we sat down Chris observed the ice and started to point out certain aspects of home ice advantage that can happen in college hockey. First, he pointed out how the benches are on opposite sides and not directly across from each other, which is not the usual placement. Most hockey benches are placed together on the same side. The staggered bench gives the home team an advantage for two periods when a line changes by being ahead of the play when they go over the boards giving the opposing teams a longer skate. Secondly, he pointed out how although every standard rink is 200 x 85 home teams are always more familiar with how the puck plays off the boards. Little details like these were lost on me. All sports have their intricacies but hockey has ice and useable walls. The puck was about to drop and the one thing I definitely knew about hockey was if you turn you head for a second you’re going to miss something.
Yale came out early with aggressive style, which made a statement early to Quinnipiac that this was not going to be a cake walk. Within seconds of the game starting the Bulldogs blasted Quinnipiac with some high impact checks that got the 3,268 fans off their feet. After a couple of shifts on the ice, Doyle gave me two guys to keep an eye on from both teams. Yale’s senior defensemen Billy Sweezey was certainly a tone setter for the Bulldogs “lining people up and demolishing them on both ends,” Chris said. Quinnipiac’s senior forward Alex Whelan moved up and down the ice effortless and always seemed to find the opening on the ice. Chris and I talked about the difference between players at a high level. In any sport there are some guys who just instinctively know where to be and can find the open area to attack. We shared a laugh when reminiscing on how hard we made the game look or how much we over thought situations when playing our respective sports. The great ones have the ability to make it look easy and be at the right place at the right time. A deflected goal by Yale’s Hayden Rowan made the game 1-0. The score remained that way in an entertaining and physical 1st period with the official allowing the players to play hard hitting hockey.
In between periods I started to jot down some notes about the game thus far. As I am trying to recall some important details of the 1st period, a man to my right asked me if I was writing an article. I introduced myself and told him about the blog. Matt Loguercio was at the game with his son (a youth hockey player) and some of his friends. Matt was a former sports writer for The Patch and now runs his own production company Sleeping Dog Entertainment. We talked about the crazy parents in youth sports, particularly youth hockey. He told me some stories about covering high school games across the state and made me laugh when he said most guys that cover high school sports for newspapers are nerds. I recently made it a habit to try and meet some new people on my travels to all these games. I have to keep trying to get out of my comfort zone because you never know who you are going to meet.
The Bobcats quickly took the Bulldogs out of their comfort zone as the second period began. The game changed when Quinnipiac went into attack mode and Yale started to turn the puck over. The highlight of the second period came when Alex Whelan weaved through defenders with poised stick handling and scored to tie it up at 1 apiece. Whelan made it all look effortless as he skated though traffic like a running back cutting in and out of defenders grasp. Early in the 3rd period Hamden, Connecticut’s own Joe O’Conner gathered his own rebound to break the 1 all tie. Yale showing true grit all night were not deterred and on Jack St. Ivany one timer, Evan Smith grabbed the” juicy” rebound (hockey has the best vernacular) and put it in the back of the net to tie the game at 2. We got free hockey people!
The free hockey didn’t last that long when 18 seconds into overtime Wyatt Bongiovanni (the Italian cowboy easily wins the name of the night) passed the puck over to Ethan De Jong who fed it to leading scorer Odeen Tufto for the game winning goal. Quinnipiac took the victory 3-2 in an outstanding contest with both teams playing inspired hockey. We were both pleased with the outcome resulting in a winner because as Chris said right before the overtime “ties are un-American.”
The ride home up route 34 was filled with more questions about the game of hockey. We talked about what strategies are deployed in games, the poise you need to have when digging a puck out of the corner knowing a defender is trying to take your head off, and how the last two minutes of hockey game when a team is down 1 goal is the most chaotic, desperate time in sports. It was a great atmosphere for hockey and I felt like I learned a lot I didn’t know about the game. As Herb Brooks declared in the movie Miracle, “Great moments are born from great opportunity.” Tonight was a great opportunity to experience the game through the eyes of a passionate hockey guy.
Nice report. Thoroughly enjoyed.