The Quinnipiac Bobcats are one win away from their first national hockey championship.
No. 2 Quinnipiac defeated No. 3 Michigan 5-2 in the Frozen Four at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida on Thursday night, avenging a quarterfinal loss to the Wolverines in last year's NCAA Tournament.
The Bobcats will play in the national title game for a third time in program history. They fell to Yale in 2013 and to North Dakota in 2016.
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This time around, Quinnipiac will be up against No. 1 Minnesota. The Golden Gophers defeated No. 5 Boston University 6-2 in Thursday's other semifinal.
Quinnipiac opened the scoring against Michigan just over five minutes into the Frozen Four showdown when Jacob Quillan capitalized on a rebound chance.
The Wolverines came up with a quick response, though. Less than two minutes later, Seamus Casey got Michigan on the board with a slick unassisted goal.
Quillan put his team back ahead at the 8:39 mark, this time beating goaltender Erik Portillo on the breakaway.
After 18-plus minutes of scoreless action, Adam Fantilli brought Michigan level again on an absolute snipe past goaltender Yaniv Perets from the faceoff circle midway through the second.
It was Fantilli's NCAA-tying 30th goal of the season.
The back-and-forth scoring continued under 90 seconds into the final period on a fortunate bounce. After Collin Graf's breakaway chance was saved by Portillo, Sam Lipkin corraled the puck behind the net and tried to play it back into the slot area. But the puck bounced off Portillo's skate and into the net for a go-ahead goal.
The Bobcats had fortune on their side yet again when a seemingly harmless shot from Zach Metsa near the sideboards got past Portillo with seven minutes remaining.
The insurance goal gave Quinnipiac the game's first set of consecutive scores. And the Bobcats would make it three straight goals inside the final two minutes on an empty-netter from Ethan de Jong.
The Frozen Four victory gave the Bobcats a program-record 33 wins this season. They'll look to raise that record to 34 when they take on the Golden Gophers at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday.
