Back-And-Forth Battle Ends In Draw As No. 13 Bobcats Tie No. 9 UMass Lowell, 3-3

Saturday, October 18

High Point Solutions Arena - Hamden, Conn.

7 pm

Quinnipiac University

Mass Lowell

Back-And-Forth Battle Ends In Draw As No. 13 Bobcats Tie No. 9 UMass Lowell, 3-3

10/18/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Ice Hockey

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HAMDEN, Conn. – Nationally-ranked No. 13 Quinnipiac Univesity men's ice hockey went back-and-forth with No. 9 UMass Lowell, playing to a 3-3 tie, in front of the standing-room-only crowd of 3,525 at High Point Solutions Arena. With the draw, Quinnipiac goes to 1-1-1 overall while UMass Lowell moves to 2-0-1.

"I think we deserved a better fate tonight," head coach Rand Pecknold said. "We deserved to win. We played well enough to win. But that's part of being a young team. We just didn't have that little extra to put it away."

Quinnipiac freshman Landon Smith (Greenwood Village, Colorado) scored twice for Quinnipiac, tying the game in the first period before netting the go-ahead goal midway through the third.

"Landon Smith was really good tonight," Pecknold said. "He played great - he had a lot of jump. He's certainly a highly talented kid. I thought he responded well tonight. Last night he struggled a bit. We've had four games so far and he's been 'ok', 'good', 'ok', 'good'...so we just need to get him more consistent. The Bentley game and tonight, he was excellent. So we just need to have to get him to do that all the time. He's obviously a highly talented player."

Justin Agosta (East Meadow, New York) tied the game moments before Smith's second goal of the night, giving him two goals for the series. Sam Anas (Potomac, Maryland) set-up Smith's first goal as well as Agosta's for a two-assist outing against the River Hawks. Freshman goalie Sean Lawrence (Granite Bay, California), starting for the first time, stopped 19 of UMass Lowell's 22 shots in the tie.

"We gave Sean Lawrence a shot tonight," Pecknold said. "I thought he was good. I'm sure he'd like to have that last one back. He had a good night, but we have to find a way to win this game."

UMass Lowell's Evan Campbell gave the River Hawks a 1-0 lead halfway through the first period with his second goal of the year. Campbell, who was released from the penalty box just seconds earlier, took a pass from Gage Hough in the slot and blasted a shot past Lawrence. Lawrence was struggling to get back into position after he left the net to play a puck behind the net that he thought was iced. After tipping the puck to his own defenseman, he collided with a UMass Lowell player and staggered back to his feet just as Hough found Campbell.

The Bobcats responded with a power play goal less than five minutes later when Landon Smith netted his first career goal to tie the game at 1-1. Travis St. Denis (Trail, British Columbia) carried the puck into the Bobcats zone and fed Peca who skated into the corner to the left of UMass Lowell goalie Kevin Boyle and started to walk across the goal line before centering a pass. Anas drew a defender and tipped the puck behind him to Smith who fired a shot through traffic that beat Boyle and tied the game.

The River Hawks answered when Dylan Zink dug the puck out from behind the Quinnipiac goal and zipped a pass to Michael Kapla at the point. Kapla threaded-the-needle and went top-shelf on Lawrence to give UMass Lowell the 2-1 lead heading into the first intermission.

Early in the third period, UMass Lowell's John Edward was called for boarding, giving Quinnipiac its fifth power play of the game. Anas handed the puck to Derek Smith (Apple Valley, Minnesota) just below the blue line in the River Hawks' zone. Smith centered a pass to Agosta who waked between the face-off circles and wristed a shot between the post and Boyle's pads to tie the game at 2-2 with just under 17 minutes to play. The goal gave Agosta a marker in two straight games and three points in the series.

With just under nine minutes to play, Devon Toews (Abbotsford, British Columbia) fired a shot from the point on goal that Boyle was able to stop. Tommy Schutt (Chanhassan, Minnesota) tipped the puck after it bounced off of Boyle's pads before Landon Smith slid across the crease and backhanded the puck past Boyle to give the Bobcats a 3-2 lead.

With less than a 90-seconds left to play, UMass Lowell pulled its goalie to go with the extra attacker. Joe Gambardella picked up the puck after a scrum in front of the Quinnipiac goal resulted in the puck trickling loose just in front of the Bobcats net. Gambardella punched it in to send the game to overtime.

Quinnipiac returns to action when it faces UConn on Tuesday, Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Connecticut.