The Engineers skated onto the Houston Field House ice with enthusiasm, confidence, and heart Saturday night against the St. Lawrence Saints, and their effort paid dividends with a 6-4 victory.
The win was the first televised ECAC Game of the Week this season, and is part of the 13-game package, 11 of which feature men’s Division I ice hockey. It also snapped a six-game losing streak against the state rivals from Canton, one which spanned the last two full seasons. Last season, the Saints defeated RPI at home, on the road, and in the ECAC Championship game, combining for nine goals while the cherry and white only tallied two.
The win tied RPI for third place in the conference with a 5-4-1 record (11 points), with an 11-6-1 record overall.
Jim Henkel and Matt Murley opened the scoring for RPI in the first period, giving the home squad a 2-0 lead. Henkel’s shorthanded goal came when Jim Vickers intercepted a pass and sent the red-hot center on a breakaway. Henkel was able to fight off two defensemen and skated in on Saints Goalie Jeremy Symington. He released a wrist shot that found its way under Symington’s right pad and into the net.
Murley scored less than three minutes later when he slipped the puck between Symington’s pads off a pass from the team’s U.S. National Junior Hockey Team representative, Marc Cavosie.
The two-goal lead stayed intact through the first intermission, but in the opening minutes of the second, St. Lawrence began their attack. When the RPI defense started showing signs of overconfidence, Saint’s Center Blair Clarance made an aggressive play and forced the puck into the RPI zone while shorthanded. From the left faceoff circle, Clarance whistled a shot in Nathan Marsters’s direction. Marsters was square to the shooter, but must have been surprised by the shot as it floated over his glove hand and toward the top of the cage. The rising puck appeared to miss the net high as it ricocheted off the glass, but video review confirmed that the puck went inside the top corner of the goal, slipping through the netting.
Unfortunately for the visitors, the goal was never counted, and play resumed. Saints Head Coach Joe Marsh didn’t seem too upset by the call, and after the game remarked, "It looked like it did, but if you look at it that way, we got the five-on-three right afterwards."
The overconfident Engineers took two successive penalties, and when the penalty expired on Mike Gallard’s slashing call, the Saints power play line of Gellard, Erik Anderson, and Alan Fyfe went to work. With Left Wing Russ Bartlett playing the point along with Senior Matt Desrosiers, St. Lawrence was able to score 54 seconds into the five-on-three when Bartlett deflected a shot that found its way past Marsters.
Building on the momentum, the same line scored 53 seconds later on the ensuing five-on-four. This time, Bartlett tipped a loose puck through Marsters’ pads, tying the game at two. The tallies continued Bartlett’s nine-game scoring streak, which now stands at 9 goals and six assists.
Rensselaer rebounded from the poor penalty kill to score a power play goal of their own at the 9:13 mark of the second period. Cavosie deflected a Steve Collova shot in, and later Danny Eberly slipped one through the five-hole to regain the 2-goal lead at 4-2.
In the closing minutes of the second, the Saints stormed to life again, as they scored twice in 1:11. Right Wing Jack O’Brien blew a shot by Marsters and Gellard added a goal, his third point of the night, with 20.8 seconds remaining in the period. The teams went to the locker room tied at 4.
"We talked about it during the second intermission and we felt that if we stayed out of the box and played our system properly, that we could go out there, carry the play, and get a few goals," said Cavosie following the game. "And that’s exactly what happened."
"I thought we came out real hard in the third period," said Head Coach Dan Fridgen in the post-game interview. "They had the momentum and we had to get it back."
And get it back they did. Only 1:46 into the final period, Freshman Ryan Shields scored his second goal in three games and kept a four-game scoring streak intact. Murley fired the puck on net, and Shields was waiting out in front of the net to poke the rebound home.
"Murley just went hard to the net and I was there for the rebound, so I just swatted it in," said Shields. "I had pretty much an open net and the goalie had no chance on it."
"That was a huge goal for us," said Fridgen about the eventual game-winner. "Matt made a nice cut and Ryan did an indirect behind him, going to the net and getting himself a goal."
Cavosie added an insurance goal midway through the third to seal the win.
It was encouraging to see RPI emerge victorious from a game that had definite shifts in momentum. With the tallies coming in 2-goal packets, the players were able to keep their emotions under control and concentrate on their game.
"We came back a couple of times, especially in that flurry at the end of the second," said Marsh. "I thought that would give us some momentum, but they got a big goal and they got the momentum back. Sometimes momentum swings are not quite as drastic as they were tonight. They were huge momentum swings tonight."
The Engineers will take on Bowling Green this weekend in a non league match.
