With the score tied late in the game, the sellout crowd of 5,152 began to get more rowdy. With a minute on the clock, the noise was almost deafening. The louder the crowd became, the less Brown was able to control the puck. The Bears merely swatted at it while RPI made several good rushes. The Engineers were playing for the win late in the third, whereas Brown seemed content to play for overtime.

Several Brown rushes fizzled out at the RPI blue line, and with 15 seconds left, Freakout! magic took over. Jake Luthi stripped an attacker of the puck, and hit an accelerating MacDonald in the defensive zone. MacDonald streaked up the right wing boards as seconds ticked off the clock. Three Bears players funneled toward him as he crossed into the offensive zone, but were giving him too much space.

MacDonald proved he is a dangerous man to give too much space to, drawing the puck in, and firing a deadly wrist shot that beat Brown goalie Adam D’Alba high to the stick side. The defenders were backing up rather than challenging him, giving MacDonald the space he needed to take the shot.

“We just caught them a little off-guard. Luthi made a great pass on the transition, and the D-man had a real gap. I was able to toe-drag it through his legs a little, and use him as a screen, and I don’t think the goalie ever saw it,” an excited MacDonald told College Sports TV after the game, adding “I’ve never celebrated like that for a goal in my life. It’s unbelievable. I can’t explain it.”

Oren Eizenman put the Engineers up 1-0 in the first, but Brown’s Sean Dersch tied it up just three minutes later. Dersch then assisted on an Antonin Roux goal in the second period.

A big play by Kevin Croxton early in the third knotted things up and put the Engineers in a prime position for another Freakout! win. Croxton carried the puck into the Bears’ zone, crossing into the left face-off circle. D’Alba flopped down onto the ice, expecting Croxton to shoot, and was completely fooled when Croxton dished the puck back in front of the net, where a darting Nick Economakos was there to hammer it into a wide open net.

The win at Freakout! marks the 15th consecutive year without a loss for the Engineers. The team’s overall record in the Freakout! is now 17-7-4, including a 9-0-2 mark under Head Coach Dan Fridgen.

The Freakout! win also represented two important league play points that the Engineers picked up, points which the team was unable to garner against Harvard the previous night.

Charlie Johnson had a pair of goals for the Crimson, and six other players got onto the scoresheet as Harvard rolled to a 3-0 win. RPI outshot the Crimson 32-16, but Dov Grumet-Morris stood on his head for the shutout victory.

Johnson’s first goal of the game came on a one-timer late in the first. The Engineers couldn’t clear the puck out of their zone, and Dylan Reese sent a cross-ice pass Johnson’s way. Goalie Andrew Martin couldn’t move across the goal mouth quickly enough, and the puck found the mesh.

Johnson doubled the lead after deking Martin in the second, and Dave Watters was able to jam the puck past Martin in the third.

The scoreboard was a frustrating sight for RPI; the Engineers had dominated much of the flow of the game, especially early on. The frustrations eventually boiled over late in the game when Croxton, MacDonald, and Economakos got into a serious shoving match with Harvard’s Watters, Ryan Lannon, and Steve Mandes.

With 45 seconds left in the game, 84 penalty minutes were handed out; each of the aforementioned six players got two minutes for roughing, two for unsportsmanlike conduct, and a ten minute misconduct. It was also a very strange sight to see the team’s top three scoring leaders in the penalty box at the same time.

RPI travels to Cornell and Colgate this weekend for its final away games in league play. A daunting task lies in front of the Engineers, as the central New York teams stand 1-2 in the ECACHL, with a combined conference record of 26-6-4.