The men’s ice hockey team improved its record to 4-4 by defeating a pair of Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference opponents. The Engineers pulled out a 4-3 win over Mercyhurst on November 17 and a 3-1 defeat of Iona last Saturday.
The Engineers’ power play work assured an RPI victory in the game against the Lakers. Rensselaer was three-for-six on power plays, while they killed all four of Mercyhurst’s.
The Lakers started the scoring 21 seconds into the game, when David Wrigley put the puck past netminder Nathan Marsters.
The Engineers came back about halfway through the first with three goals in three and a half minutes: a Carson Butterwick power play goal, a Danny Eberly four-on-three goal, and a Chris Migliore goal with even strength. RPI generated some good offense to score these goals, but wasn’t able to consistently keep it up. The team created some plays, but only put up 30 shots on goal during the entire game.
“Those things happen,” said Head Coach Dan Fridgen about the early Mercyhurst goal. “But I thought we did a good job coming back.”
The team came out of the first period ahead and didn’t look back, he said.
The second period was slow. The puck spent time at both ends of the ice, but no one got up on the board until nearly the 15-minute mark, when the Lakers decreased the RPI margin to one when Mike Carter beat Marsters for a goal. Nolan Graham scored the Engineers’ final goal with 37 seconds left in the period on another RPI power play.
The third period was another back and forth battle. Spirits were running high; a scuffle between Butterwick and Laker Marc Varteressian led to a 10-minute misconduct to each, a four-minute hitting after the whistle call for Varteressian, and a two-minute call for Butterwick.
The Lakers scored once more with only 50 seconds left in the game. Marsters was down on the ice, and Marty Rychley put one above his head with a slow arc shot. The Lakers pulled their goalie for the remainder of the game, but were not able to score again.
“I thought we had some beautiful plays as far as the power play was concerned,” said Fridgen. “The team as a whole responded very well.”
The Iona game was just the reverse of the Mercyhurst game—the bulk of RPI’s scoring came late in the game.
Iona got on the board first on a goal by Brent Williams, but a late first-period goal by Ryan Shields tied the game at one.
Throughout the next 40 minutes, the Engineers peppered Iona Goaltender Mike Fraser with 30 shots, but he did not crack until the third period, when Marc Cavosie scored on a power play. He got assists from Andrew McPherson and Steve Munn to net his team-leading sixth goal of the season. Freshman Nick Economakos added an insurance goal—the first of his collegiate career—with five minutes remaining to seal the win.
The Engineers will be at home this Saturday against archrival Union College—RPI has traditionally dominated this matchup, but in 2000-01 Union won the season series for the first time ever, and the Dutchmen will be looking to make it two in a row. Game time is at 7 pm.
