PITTSBURGH – Minutes between the pipes have been hard to come by for Quinnipiac freshman goalie Jacob Meyers, who knows a little about playing on a big stage.

In high school at Benilde-St. Margaret's, Meyers backstopped the Red Knights to the state tournament, and as eager as he is to play more on the college level, he's been watching another Minnesota kid in awe most of the season.

Meyers is the understudy for senior Eric Hartzell, originally from White Bear Lake, who has led the Bobcats to within a game of college hockey's pinnacle.

Hartzell and Quinnipiac will face Yale for the fourth time this season on Saturday night in the NCAA Frozen Four championship game. The Bobcats have won the first three meetings.

In his first season s a collegian, Meyers has learned plenty in class, but he said watching Hartzell's work in practice and games has been as much of an education.

"Coming from Benilde to junior hockey to here, you get to see what it takes to get yourself to that next level," Meyers said Friday, as the Bobcats got ready for their final full practice of the season at Pittsburgh's Consol Energy Center. "Getting to play behind Eric and getting to watch the kinds of things he does to get ready every day, what he does in practice and all the extra stuff he does, it's a lesson."

The Gophers were ranked atop the national polls at the start of the season, but were eclipsed by the Bobcats, who went on a 21-game unbeaten run over the course of the winter.

Still, they had never won on the national stage. Their conference, the ECAC, hadn't sent a team to the NCAA title game in more than two decades, and since they represent a school that few outside New England can pronounce, or find on a map, Quinnipiac was rarely taken seriously as a hockey program."

After winning the ECAC regular-season title and using a combination of blinding team speed and Hartzell's goaltending to beat Canisius, Union and St. Cloud State and reach the title game, nobody is questioning the Bobcats' legitimacy any longer.

Three weeks ago, Hartzell shut out Yale 3-0 in the ECAC tournament's consolation game. Much has changed for the Bulldogs since then as well. They were the 15th seed in the 16-team NCAA tourney, but upset the Gophers, North Dakota and UMass Lowell to get to the title game.

Yale coach Keith Allain said his approach is to try to keep things as "normal" as possible before they face perhaps the biggest game in school history, or at least the biggest since Feb. 1, 1896, when Yale and Johns Hopkins skated to a 2-2 tie in Baltimore, in the first-ever college hockey game.

"We do what we've done all year long. Nothing is going to change. We have our game day routine," Allain said.

The Yale and Quinnipiac campuses are less than 10 miles apart, and the two programs know each other perhaps better than any other college hockey neighbors.

"We pride ourselves in being ready, and we pride ourselves on playing fast and pushing the tempo, and that's what we'll try to do (Saturday) night," Allain said.

Whichever of these neighbors is able to push the tempo in the title game will win bragging rights not only to their part of Connecticut, but to the college hockey world.