The men’s ice hockey team came up with its first four-point weekend of the season in its homestand against North Country rivals St. Lawrence and Clarkson, beating them 3-2 and 4-3 respectively. Saturday’s game against Clarkson saw the Engineers come back from a 3-0 deficit in the third period for an overtime win at the 25th annual Big Red Freakout.
The Engineers were never behind in the game against the Saints. Carson Butterwick opened the scoring with a power play goal in the middle of the first period when Matt Murley found him right in front of the crease. The Saints came back a few minutes later with a power play goal of their own.
The second period saw the Engineers regain the lead and keep it. Marc Cavosie fed the puck to Conrad Barnes, who took off in a breakaway to score the go-ahead goal. Later in the period, Butterwick tipped a Steve Munn shot into the goal to seal the lead. The Saints came back with one goal at the end of the third period, but couldn’t generate a tying goal, giving the Engineers the win.
Goaltender Nathan Marsters kept the Engineers in the game with 35 saves, including 28 in the first two periods. The RPI defense was fairly strong throughout the game, but really turned it on in the third, keeping the Saints to seven shots on goal. The win was good for the team after two disappointing games against Dartmouth the previous two weekends in which the Engineers gave up second-period leads for a 4-2 loss and 2-2 tie.
With Clarkson’s unexpected tie against Union and RPI’s win over St. Lawrence, combined with the fact that Saturday was the Big Red Freakout, things initially looked promising for the Engineers. By the end of the second, however, things looked pretty grim.
Clarkson dominated the first two periods of play, keeping the Rensselaer players in their own zone. The Knights gave the home team few scoring chances; those that did come were stopped by the posts and big saves by Clarkson goalie Mike Walsh, who posted 34 saves during regulation.
The third period definitely belonged to the Engineers. They got past the brick wall of Walsh, putting in three goals on only 11 shots. The first goal came halfway through the period, in a four-on-four situation caused by a Ryan Shields five-minute major for hitting from behind followed by a Clarkson holding penalty. Cavosie put the puck in, with assists from Barnes and Scott Basiuk.
Cavosie picked up an assist with just over four minutes left in the game, when he grabbed the puck behind the net and hit Jim Henkel, who put it in past Walsh.
With just over a minute left and both teams down a man because of a fight, Clarkson called a timeout. RPI Head Coach Dan Fridgen pulled Marsters and put in five forwards. Barnes won the faceoff in the Clarkson end, and Cavosie came up with a goal six seconds later.
RPI grabbed the win a minute and a half into the overtime period when Carson Butterwick scored off of a two-on-one breakaway with Barnes just as an RPI power play was ending.
The win stretched RPI’s Big Red Freakout unbeaten streak to 12 games (8-0-4 in last 12 years, 14-7-4 overall). It was also their first win over Clarkson since November 1999, and the first time the Engineers have swept a weekend against the North Country in four years.
The wins moved RPI into a tie with Union for sixth in the conference with 15 points, just three points behind Dartmouth and Colgate. Rensselaer will close the season with six more conference games in the next three weekends, and a good showing in these games could give the Engineers home ice for the first round of the playoffs.
