Friday night, the Engineers were over at New Haven, Connecticut to visit the Yale Bulldogs. Both teams were coming off wins from the previous week, so each squad was looking to build off that momentum in the game.

The Bulldogs struck first in the game with a shorthanded marker, when Yale’s Christopher Higgins broke past the RPI defense and scored on a wrist shot past RPI goalie Kevin Kurk at 15:16 into the first period. By the end of the period, the Engineers had out-shot the Bulldogs 11-8, but Yale goaltender Peter Cohen kept RPI from lighting the lamp the entire period.

The second period was equally detrimental to the Engineers, as Yale scored yet again while shorthanded. Yale’s Jeff Dwyer was sent a pass from the point and took a shot, which hit some defenders before finding its way past Kurk at 15:36 into the second to bring Yale up 2-0.

The third period was a much different story from the first two, where goaltending was the theme. Both RPI and Yale scored on the power play early on in the third. Yale scored at 3:39 into the third when Nick Deschenes took a quick shot that beat Kurk on his stick-side to go up 3-0. Then, just under a minute later, RPI responded with a power play goal. At 4:18 into the third, Mark Yurkewecz managed to bang in a loose puck past Cohen to put the Engineers up on the score board.

Yale’s Ryan Steeves responded to RPI’s power play goal at 7:11, when he managed to push the puck just past the goal line to pull his squad ahead 4-1. The Engineers came back with another goal of their own, when Kevin Croxton took a pass from Vic Pereira and flipped the puck just over Cohen’s stick to bring the score up to 4-2. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs put the Engineers away at 16:36 in the third period. Yale’s Jeff Hristovski put the puck past Kurk on a low shot to bring the final tally to 5-2.

Saturday saw the Engineers head over to New Jersey to play the Princeton Tigers. Both teams were looking for vital wins to improve the outlook of their season.

Once again, the opposition struck first. Tigers’ Dan Hursh scored at the 9:21 mark of the first period to open up the scoring. Princeton struck again at 18:56 of the first; Neil Stevenson-Moore scored past RPI’s Kurk on the Tigers’ power play.

RPI returned the favor in the second period, when Scott Romfo scored on the power play at 11:45. But the story of the second period would be the goaltending of Princeton’s Trevor Clay, who stopped 20 of 21 shots on goal. Princeton struck once again on the power play, when Matt Maglione scored on a four-on-three situation at 10:41 into the third period.

RPI once again came back, when last week’s ECAC Rookie Of The Week Kevin Croxton scored unassisted on a power play at 15:01 of the third. Stevenson-Moore of Princeton struck again, and scored the eventual game winner at 15:54 on a two-on-one rush.

In the dying moments of the game, RPI captain Danny Eberly scored on the power play at 17:49 on Clay, who was screened by Croxton. However, that was as close as it got for the Engineers, as a costly penalty to Croxton with 55 seconds left closed the game out with the Princeton Tigers edging out the Engineers by a final score of 4-3.