What to know about UND's regional final opponent Quinnipiac
· Yahoo Sports
Mar. 27—SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — UND will play Quinnipiac at 6 p.m. Saturday in the Sioux Falls Regional final.
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The winner will advance to the NCAA Frozen Four in Las Vegas from April 9-11.
Here are a few things to know about Quinnipiac, which won the ECAC's regular-season title for the sixth season in a row.
Quinnipiac and UND are both analytics darlings this season.
Quinnipiac ranks No. 1 nationally — by a long shot — in expected goals percentage.
What does that mean?
For example, if you generate and give up equal scoring chances, you'd be at 50%. Quinnipiac is at 63.7%. Wisconsin is second at 59.4%. UND is third at 59.2%, followed by Union 58.9%, Denver 58.8%, Michigan 58.8% and Cornell 58.7%.
Both teams also are routinely outshooting opponents.
Quinnipiac ranks No. 1 nationally in shots-on-goal advantage, while UND is No. 4.
Quinnipiac has only been outshot in three of 39 games this season. UND has been outshot 12 times in 38 games.
Quinnipiac has the NCAA's leading scorer on its roster in Hobey Baker Award finalist Ethan Wyttenbach, who has racked up 25 goals and 59 points in 39 games as a freshman.
Wyttenbach is playing in his old home arena, too.
He spent last season with the Sioux Falls Stampede in the United States Hockey League. Sioux Falls plays its home games in the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
Wyttenbach, of Roslyn, N.Y., is a fifth-round draft pick of the Calgary Flames.
"He has elite offensive vision," Pecknold said. "He's really precise on shooting, passing. . . everything's perfect, where it needs to be. Another thing he does really well, which is impossible to teach, is his ability for offensive timing — when to get open, when to move to space. He creates a lot of space for himself by subtle, little things. It's hard to teach what he does. Obviously, he's very good at it."
Quinnipiac and UND have the two highest-scoring freshman classes in the NCAA tournament.
Quinnipiac's rookie class has tallied 185 points. UND's has tallied 146.
Quinnipiac's top three scorers are freshmen — Wyttenbach (59 points), Antonin Verreault (40) and Markus Vidicek (35).
UND's Cole Reschny (34) and Will Zellers (32) rank second and fourth on the team in scoring.
There's a contrast in size between Quinnipiac and UND.
Quinnipiac is the lightest team in the country (average of 179 pounds) and is the fifth-shortest (average of 5 feet, 11.63 inches),
according to College Hockey News.
UND is sixth in average weight (193.3 pounds) and eighth in average height (6-feet, 1.04 inches).
"We won the national championship with the smallest team in the country," Pecknold said. "Listen, I would love every kid to be 6-4 and 220, but finding those guys with high character and elite hockey IQ and elite skill. . . they're probably a first-round draft pick and they're one-and-done or we're not getting them. We're not going to get kids like that."
Quinnipiac figured out a recipe that works, though.
The Bobcats have the longest NCAA tournament streak in the country at seven years. They're three years removed from winning the 2023 national championship.
"We don't go out recruiting, 'Hey, we need small players,'" Pecknold said. "But we end up getting a lot of really good small players that other schools pass on because they do everything well, but they're 5-8. So, it's not something that's by design. It's just kind of worked out that way. And we win a lot of games, so we don't worry about it."
Quinnipiac is the best faceoff team in the country — by a significant margin.
The Bobcats are winning 57.2% of their draws. That's 2% more than anyone else in the country.
Victor Czerneckianair is their top guy at 60.7%. Matthew Lansing is at 58.3%, Vidicek 57.1% and Chris Pelosi 51.8%.
Quinnipiac won the faceoff battle against Providence in the regional opener 46-27.
UND is fourth nationally in draws at 54.2%.
Quinnipiac sophomore defenseman Elliott Groenewold is a remarkable plus-41 this season.
Nobody else in the country is better than plus-30.
Groenewold and Graham Sward, who played professional hockey last season for the AHL's Manitoba Moose and ECHL's Norfolk Admirals, are Quinnipiac's time on ice leaders.
UND and Quinnipiac have met in the NCAA tournament twice.
In 2015, UND beat the Bobcats in the first round of the tournament in Fargo's Scheels Arena. The following year, UND topped Quinnipiac 5-1 in Tampa in the NCAA national championship game.
The two teams also have played a pair of nonconference series recently.
UND traveled to Quinnipiac for a two-game series in October 2021. Quinnipiac made the return trip to Grand Forks in October 2022.
Pecknold said he talked to UND athletic director Bill Chaves about scheduling another nonconference series between the teams. Chaves worked at Quinnipiac when Pecknold first took over as head coach of the Bobcats.
"I thought it was a great two-year series (in 2021 and 2022)," Pecknold said. "We always want to play great teams in nonconference. We've pretty much played BU, BC every year. . . almost every year. Then, Maine, we have a running, unlimited deal with them — two games a year. I know we're trying to get some other good teams back on the docket. It's important for us to have a really good nonconference schedule."