The men’s ice hockey team dropped Friday’s game against archrival Clarkson University 3-2. The Engineers held the game at 2-2 for the entire second period and most of the third, letting the game winner through with less than five minutes remaining.
The first period was marked by a large number of penalties; players earned 12 minutes of box time during the first 10 minutes of play. The first penalty, a slashing call against RPI’s Jim Henkel, led to a power play goal by Clarkson when Defenseman Kent Huskins found Goaltender Kevin Kurk out of position. Not long after, the Knights followed up with a rebound goal, bringing the score to 2-0 and leading Head Coach Dan Fridgen to remove Kurk in favor of fellow Freshman Nathan Marsters.
Clarkson’s early two-goal lead gave them quite a bit of momentum, but the defense stepped up and so did Marsters, who stopped eight shots in the rest of the period.
Rensselaer took away Clarkson’s lead near the end of the first period with two goals in quick succession. Sophomore Marc Cavosie scored the first goal from the right-hand face-off circle, showing great placement and sending the puck top shelf past Goaltender Mike Walsh. The second goal came when Scott Basiuk took a shot that was deflected off Cavosie’s back past the goalie.
The next 35 minutes of hockey were mostly a standoff. Neither team was able to score, despite several power plays including 26 seconds of Clarkson 5-on-3 in the second period.
The stalemate was finally broken when Huskins took a shot from the blue line and teammate David Evans picked up the rebound and put it past Marsters for the game-winning goal.
There were a couple of contributing factors to the loss. The Engineers failed to capitalize on breakaways. Henkel alone had three breakaways in the game without a goal. Regarding the breakaways, Fridgen said he thought "it should have been 4-0 after the first." Also, RPI didn’t take full advantage of their power play opportunities, going 0 for six.
Asked about the loss, Marsters commented, "It happens—we’ve just got to bounce back."
