RPI ROAD STARTS THROUGH YALE
RPI travels to take on Yale in New Haven, Conn. for the first round of the ECAC tournament this weekend
TROY, N.Y>> After a roller coaster of a season, RPI Hockey is coming into the ECAC Conference tournament as the 11 seed with a 10-21-3 overall record and 7-13-2 conference. They will face the sixth seeded Yale at New Haven’s Ingalls Rink on Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m.
RPI trudges into the postseason dropping their last three, including losses to Harvard and Darmouth this past weekend.
“It’s the wrong weekend to be out of sync,” said RPI Head Coach Dave Smith following the Saturday night loss to Dartmouth, 5-2. “Hopefully it’s a weekend and it’s done and we get rid of it. Maybe the urgency of do or die can snap us back into the steady strong team play that we have had for so long and that we have been building and building.”
In both games last weekend, RPI took a goal lead into the second period before deflating second periods took RPI out of both. Uncharacteristic of a team that many across the ECAChave tabbed as a difficult team to play, regardless of record, this season.
“It’s not good to get it at all,”
all,” said Smith. “You don’t plan for it, you don’t want it, and you want to avoid it like the plague. It happened. We created it. Now we have got to recreate the energy and the mojo that we had.”
That energy, which seemed to have been revved up by the Mayor’s Cup tie to Union on January 29, consisted of a five game point streak for the Engineers and key wins over Cornell, in overtime, and Colgate.
RPI will need to put last weekend aside before getting on the bus to New Haven, because Yale has not been an easy task this season.
Finishing 13-13- 3 overall this season and 11-10-1 in conference competition, the Engineer’s may be catching Yale at the most opportune time. Yale enters the post-season with a four game losing streak, with losses to Quinnipiac, Princeton, Harvard, and Dartmouth stretching back to January 16.
Still, Yale is undefeated in the season series with RPI. First, a 4-2 win back on De- cember 7 and then a 3-2 win on January 26, Yale has had RPI’s number on some of their better nights.
In the first loss, RPI goals were scored by Patrick Polino and Brady Ferner and goalie Owen Savory made 31 saves.
In the second loss, which came on “Big Red Freakout Night” on January 26, Ottoville Leppänen and Chase Zieky scored the goals for RPI, with Savory making 19 saves.
Robbie DeMontis and Justin Pearson were key for the Bulldogs in both of their wins over RPI earlier this year. Pearson has scored three goals against RPI, two of which in the first meeting, and DeMontis had an important one in game two that gave the Bulldogs the lead that they never gave up.
Both players, are in Yale’s top five scorers.
Yale’s offense is still being led by the senior, Joe Snively. Snively currently has 32 points this season (14 goals, 18 assists) and is Yale’s nominee for the Hobey Baker award this season, given to college hockey’s best division one student-athlete.
In net for the Bulldogs, it’s been a dead even split. Senior Sam Tucker has 14 starts, junior Corbin Kaczperski has 15. Kaczperski’s 2.58 goals against and .904 save percentage are just slightly behind Tucker’s 2.50 goals against and .919 save percentage, but Kaczperski has started both games against RPI this season and holds a 7- 5-2 record, making him the safe bet to start the conference tournament games.
For RPI, Savory is almost certainly the guy. Savory has started every RPI game since January 11 and has only been pulled once, which was on Saturday against Dartmouth.
Savory has a deceptively poor 5-13-3 record considering when stacked up against his 2.41 goals against average and .928 save percentage. For a team looking to build and grow, giving the freshman goalie some early post season experience feels like the right move.
As for the RPI skaters, Jacob Hayhurst still leads the Engineers with 23 points, however, RPI’s Hobey Baker nominee only as three goals this season. Funny enough, RPI’s leading goal scorers this year both only have eight. Brady Wiffen and Chase Zieky are tied for that honor of goal leader, with Zieky only competing in 19 of the team’s 34 games due to NCAA transfer rules.
For comparison, Yale’s leading goal scorer is Snively, who has 14.
Realistically all that means is that goals are spread out through the lineup and can come from everywhere. Most recently, North Dakota transfer Mike Gornall potted his first goal of the season against Dartmouth, so maybe that can open the flood gates for the junior. Along with Gornall, Nick Bowman scored his first career goal back on February 1 and was able to add two more as the month went on.
Offense can be generated from anywhere, and with guys like Bowman and Gornall finding some puck luck and confidence, Zieky continuing his scorer’s touch, maybe RPI can surprise some people this weekend in New Haven.
Puck drop is 7 p.m. in New Haven on Friday and Saturday night, and a third game being scheduled for Sunday at 4 p.m. if necessary.