The men’s hockey team continued their largely uninspired play this past weekend, losing two key ECAC games at home. Since early December, the Engineers have only managed to win one game in eight tries and have a 1-6-1 record. During that time, the team has dropped into 11th place in the ECAC, and only two points now separate them from the lowly Princeton Tigers in the standings.
Despite the team’s sluggish performance, Rensselaer gave Head Coach Dan Fridgen a three-year extension to his contract on Thursday.
In Friday night’s game, the Engineers hosted the Colgate Raiders, a team they have dominated in the past four seasons; prior to the game, RPI had won each of the last six meetings between the two teams.
The first two periods of the game belonged to the goal tenders. The Engineers had several good chances to score, but could not land a single shot past Colgate goalie David Cann, whose superhuman, acrobatic play resembled NHL player Dominique Hasek. For his part, Engineer junior goalie Kevin Kurk held his own and stopped all 20 Raiders’ shots.
In the third period, the stalemate was finally broken at the 2:54 mark when Raider defenseman Joey Mormino sailed a wrist shot from the left point past Kurk. Energized by the roaring crowd late in the period, the Engineers tried to mount a comeback, but were thwarted by tack-on goals from Adam Mitchell and Scooter Smith in the last three minutes of the game and lost 3-0.
On Saturday night, RPI played host to the Cornell Big Red, the fourth ranked team in Division I hockey and winner of the ECAC tournament in the past two seasons.
After being shutout by Colgate and Union in their last four regulation periods, the Engineers
got off to a strong start, scoring early with a powerful wrist shot from sophomore forward Nick Economakos just 2:03 into the game. The Engineers maintained their one-goal lead for the remaining stretch of the first period and looked poised to stage an upset of the Big Red.
However, the team gradually lost their focus as the game rolled along, and their play became sloppy and undisciplined; the Engineers took seven unnecessary penalties in just the first two periods. Senior Steven Baby single-handedly tied the game and gave Cornell the lead in the second period, scoring two goals in just 11 minutes. The Big Red later increased their lead to two goals when Ryan Vesce deflected a hard shot from Baby past RPI goalie Nathan Marsters at the 16:00 mark on a power play.
The Engineers did come within one goal of tying Cornell in the third period when Kirk MacDonald rocketed a power play goal from the left circle past Big Red goalie David LeNeveau, but could not pull even and lost the game 3-2.
RPI’s next game will be played this Friday at Vermont.
