Rand Pecknold is on top of the mountain in college hockey and he’s loving the view.
“It’s been chaos since we won, but it’s been great,” he said.
Reaching the summit beats the heck out of life on the bottom, which is where Pecknold (Bedford, N.H.) was 29 years ago.
A 12-3 home loss to Bentley in November 1994 got his coaching career at Quinnipiac got off to a rocky start.
“We did absolutely nothing that I’d been preaching and teaching in practice. I dressed three goalies and I had to play all three. It was not a spectacular debut,” he remembered.
Not long afterward he recorded the first of his 615 wins, a 9-5 victory over Stonehill. “Bobby Lucarelli (East Haven, Conn.) had four goals,” said Pecknold, who was making $6,700 to coach and was teaching high school history to help pay the bills.
And so it began. From humble beginnings, the Bobcats and their coach embarked on a climb that peaked — after decades of blood, sweat and tears — in the 2023 NCAA championship.
