After suffering an overtime loss in the opening round of their own Rensselaer/HSBC Holiday Hockey Tournament, the Engineers got back on track with a 6-2 win over the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

The game went back and forth early on as each team tried to establish their game. The Engineers struck first, however, when Junior Hammish Cunning connected with Junior Jim Henkel on a long outlet pass. Henkel converged on the net and fired a wrist shot that hit Goalie Tony Zasowki on the arm and found its way into the goal for a 1-0 Engineers’ lead.

The second period got off to a much faster start when the Engineers collected a power play goal just 16 seconds into the period. Junior Matt Murley took a pass, edged by the Irish’s Brett Lebda and then deked Zasowski and upped the RPI lead to 2-0. The Irish got one back on a power play of their own when Dan Carlson connected with Lebda who put one past Freshman Goalie Kevin Kurk.

Just 51 seconds later the Engineers were at it again. This time Freshman Ben Barr scooped in his first collegiate goal off of a miss by Junior Andrew McPherson. RPI added two more scores in the period as Sophomore Carson Butterwick netted a goal on a power play, and McPherson scored a goal off a faceoff just 31 seconds later. This upped the Rensselaer advantage to 5-1 as the period closed.

"That was the difference, no question," lamented Irish Head Coach Dave Poulin, referring to the second period. "They’re a different team when they’re up 1-0. And then they got rolling in the second period and we couldn’t match them." Added Rensselaer Head Coach Dan Fridgen, "Playing four periods of hockey last night versus what they had and I thought we were sluggish in the first. But in the second we picked it up and did a good job."

In the closing period the Irish’s Ryan Dolder sent one home, before RPI’s Scott Basiuk found the back of the net to make the final score 6-2.

"Coming off last night’s loss we were able to put it out of our minds and park it," said Fridgen. He went on to say, "You can’t be shy about it, you have to come out, you have an out of league opponent and it’s RPI versus Notre Dame and we have to do what’s best for our team."

With the win the Engineers improved to 9-4-1 on the season and moved into the heart of the ECAC season.