Victor Czerneckianair has long had a front-row seat to the building of a powerhouse program at Quinnipiac.
Growing up about a half-hour north of the Hamden, Conn., campus in Southington, he attended many Bobcats games and remembers watching stars of coach Rand Pecknold’s (Bedford, N.H.) past teams such as Matthew Peca and Jordan Samuels-Thomas.
There was no place the junior forward would have rather been when it was time for him to blaze a college hockey path.
“Ever since I was young, it was almost like a dream school for me to be here,” said Czerneckianair, whose New England upbringing included time playing for the Mid Fairfield Rangers, South Kent and Mount St. Charles.
“It’s amazing that my parents saw me watching the team growing up and now they’re watching me on the ice, playing for them,” he added. “I think it’s really cool for the younger kids around to look up to me and all the local guys and say, ‘I want to be them.’ It’s a really cool feeling and I think it pushes us to be the best that we can.”
Czerneckianair has been part of the latest two of Quinnipiac’s five consecutive NCAA tournament-qualifying teams, including serving as the fourth-line center on the 2023 squad that beat Minnesota in overtime to capture the first national championship in school history.
Pecknold guided Quinnipiac down a long road to reach that stage, having brought teams to the title games at the 2013 and 2016 Frozen Fours before winning the big one.
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Czerneckianair and the team’s four other Connecticut natives have had their eyes on a majority of the recent run, with current sophomores Andon Cerbone (Stamford, Conn.) and Matthew McGroarty (Westport, Conn.) being only months away from joining the program themselves when the championship trophy was raised in Tampa.
The local connection is especially special for the players themselves, but Pecknold and his staff are solely focused on finding the right people to contribute to the program’s goals.
“We do well in Connecticut, but we’ll take kids from anywhere, right?” said the 32nd-year coach who has built the program up from the Division 2 level. “In the end, we want young men with high character that are willing to compete and are excited to come to Quinnipiac.”
Much of Pecknold’s teams’ success is built around a hard-working, detail-oriented style — both on and off the ice.
The identity was clear as soon as Czerneckianair — who Pecknold expects to continue his strong career progression into an elevated role in the lineup — set foot in the locker room.
“No matter if a team is more or less skilled than the previous year, the one thing all of his teams have is details,” Czerneckianair said. “When we win a faceoff, dump the puck in and make a quick play to get a shot, it almost builds (to scoring a goal). All of those points, those little things, add up, and (Pecknold and his staff) recognize that.”
Indeed, that all rang true again last year for the Bobcats, who won another ECAC Hockey regular-season championship and were a game away from returning to the Frozen Four, advancing past Wisconsin on the strength of Czerneckianair’s tying and winning goals before an overtime loss to Boston College in the regional final.
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Even with nine freshmen and five transfers incoming and four underclassmen lost to professional contracts — including reigning ECAC Hockey Player of the Year Collin Graf (Lincoln, Mass.) to the San Jose Sharks — success is still expected.
“With any of the really good teams or great teams we’ve had, you have to have great captains,” Pecknold said. “Our four guys (including Greenwich, Conn., native defenseman Cooper Moore) have done a great job so far. What's really important, too, is getting another group right under them, of another three to five guys that don't have a letter, but they're leaders too — they're doing things the right way and holding guys accountable. … We’ve got a lot of new guys, but we've got to adapt and find a way to make it work.”
Though there will be plenty of new faces on the line chart, the Bobcats won’t be completely lacking experience after dipping into the NCAA Transfer Portal for a number of their new additions, including former UMass captain and national championship-winning defenseman Aaron Bohlinger as a graduate student. Among others, senior Jack Ricketts joins the forward group after co-leading Holy Cross in goals with 19 last season.
New England hockey fans also will be excited about two of the program’s first-year additions in defensemen Elliott Groenewold (Springfield, Vt.) and forward Chris Pelosi, who are both Boston Bruins draft picks.
From a talent standpoint, Pecknold likes what is assembled on his roster, but putting the pieces together and finding a new core of leaders will be vitally important as this season ramps up. The players see such a group starting to come together.
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“We’ve brought in a couple really good leaders, older players that were leaders at other schools,” said Moore, who played three years at Brunswick after growing up in the Mid Fairfield program. “It’s awesome to have those perspectives on our team now because we’re going to need to lean on them. We’ve already talked to them about not being scared to be a leader. Once they came (for summer workouts) in July, they’re one of us.”
The transfer path is exactly how Quinnipiac acquired Moore, whose perspective on what goes on in Hamden is unique.
He didn’t merely watch the Bobcats’ journey to the top from afar two seasons ago. He played against them in a two-game October series while at North Dakota, but seeing how they play from the opposing bench and now being engrained in it have been completely different experiences.
Upon arriving at Quinnipiac last year, Moore immediately took on a key role as both a leader and a top-four defenseman alongside graduated captain Jayden Lee. He’s earned an ‘A’ on his sweater for his graduate season.
“I’ve seen how two different teams operate, and I think the biggest thing here is just that the culture is contagious,” Moore said. “Everybody works. Everybody communicates with one another and tries to give energy. … It was awesome to see last year, and now to be able to teach the new guys and see them buying in. I’m excited for our team to grow over the course of the year.”
It’s a new year with a new team, but the culture-driven Bobcats already have their eyes set on returning to a place that they proved is possible a couple of years ago.
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The road back to the Frozen Four starts now.
“(Pecknold) always says, ‘You can always change your fate. Where you start in August isn’t where you’re going to end up in March,’ ” Moore said. “He does a really good job of empowering the whole team that … how hard you work is what you’re going to get out of it.
“I think this is a hungry, hard-working group. At the end of the day, we all want to win. We want to get to St. Louis.”
