Going in to Friday evening’s game, the RPI Engineers had a paltry three wins in ECAC play and sat just two points above last place Princeton in the conference standings. The future didn’t look very good for the Engineers either, as that evening they were slated to face second place Harvard Crimson at the Houston Field House.
As the first period was underway, you couldn’t tell that the game was between a second place team and an 11th place team, as the Engineers kept toe-to-toe with the Crimson. Harvard slipped up early, when at 5:28, Crimson forward Brendan Bernakevitch was called for a holding penalty. This sparked a fire in the RPI team, as they took full advantage of the power play situation to take the lead at the 6:00 mark. The Engineers’ special play unit kept solid pressure on Crimson goalie Dov Grumet-Morris, but he couldn’t hold back the pressure as Carson Butterwick managed to just trickle the puck into the net for the goal. Harvard quickly answered with a goal of their own, however, when Bernakevitch returned the favor and scored at 7:20 into the first when he rifled a shot past RPI netminder Kevin Kurk just off the face-off, catching Kurk off guard. Just as the period was winding down, with no sign of either team flinching, RPI struck again when Nolan Graham banged in a rebound on Grumet-Morris at 18:41 to give the Engineers the lead.
The second period saw the game fall apart for the Engineers, starting with a Harvard goal in the first minute of play. The Crimson’s Ryan Lannon scored on the five-hole of Kurk, who was screened by several players, at just 54 seconds into the period. Just minutes later, the Crimson found the net again in similar fashion, when Harvard forward Charlie Johnson shot the puck through traffic and Kurk’s five-hole at 2:35. Harvard resumed their scoring flurry not long after, when at 7:51 into the second, the Crimson’s Dennis Packard scored after the Harvard team kept pressuring in front of the Engineers’ net. At this point, after letting in four goals from just eight shots, Kevin Kurk was pulled in favor of Nathan Marsters. This changing of the guard didn’t faze Harvard one bit, as they scored yet again, this time off the stick of Dominic Moore, who got the tally at 10:31 into the second after a spectacular individual effort of skating around the entire RPI defense and Marsters for the goal. Harvard’s Aaron Kim made the evening that much more miserable for the Engineers, as he netted the Crimson’s fifth goal of the evening at 17:54 into the second. In RPI’s only bright point of the period, C.J. Hanafin scored in the dying seconds of the game at 19:21 when he just avoided the Crimson defensive line and snuck a shot just past Grumet-Morris to bring the score up to 6-3.
Despite their best efforts, the Engineers just could not muster enough offensive pressure to beat Grumet-Morris, and their frustrations showed in the form of numerous penalties, most of which were retaliatory. As has been the norm throughout this season, RPI did score towards the end of the game, but it was too little too late, as Nick Economakos gave the Engineers one last goal in the loss at 19:15. The 6-4 loss to Harvard brought the Engineers’ losing streak to an abysmal seven in a row, and their winless streak to nine games in a row.
If there was ever a game that the Engineers needed to win this season, it was this past Saturday at the annual Big Red Freakout, where RPI has been unbeaten in the last 12 years. In front of over 5,000 rabid fans, the Engineers faced off against the Brown Bears, desperately seeking a win.
Much to the delight of the near sold-out crowd, the Engineers were the first team to get on the board, when standout freshman Kevin Croxton made a fantastic move from the side of the net to score on the far side of Brown goalie Yann Danis to give RPI the lead at 11:43, just at the tail-end of an RPI power play. The Bears’ Shane Mudryk responded shortly after with a goal of his own at 14:51, when he caught RPI’s Nathan Marsters down and popped the puck right over him. Brown scored again just under a minute later, when Les Haggett scored in a similar manner to Mudryk’s goal. The Engineers, refusing to be shown up by their opponents, retaliated with a goal of their own in the dying minutes of the period. Taking a page out of Harvard’s playbook, Scott Basiuk scored right off the faceoff with a point shot at 19:27 to tie the game at two goals apiece.
Both teams tried unsuccessfully to take the lead several times in the second period, but to no avail. That is, until 18:42 into the second, when Basiuk scored his second of the game when he shot the puck through traffic to bring the Engineers into the lead-in a shot so hard that it came straight out of the net and the goal judge never saw it. Dan Fridgen said after the game that, “if that shot wasn’t going into the net, it was going to go right through [Danis].”
Brown, wanting the win to keep their first round bye in the ECAC playoffs, scored as soon as they could in the third period, when Les Haggett got his second goal of the game to tie the score at 2:27. For the rest of the period, the Engineers kept pushing for the game-winner as they uncharacteristically out-shot Brown by a margin of 11-4 in the third period. However, their efforts turned up empty as the period closed out.
Overtime looked the same way, as neither team could really gain the upper hand. As the final minute came around, Brown looked to be content with the tie as they iced the puck down into the Engineers’ zone. With around a half minute left in overtime, the Engineers made one last rush for the game. RPI’s Ryan Shields brought the puck into the Bears’ zone to initiate some offense. But while the whole building seemed fixated on to the clock as the last 10 seconds of the game were being played out, there was an odd twist of fate as somehow, the puck rebounded off of Brown captain Tye Korbl’s stick just over the shoulder of Danis, to give the Engineers the game winning goal. More importantly, the Engineers finally got the proverbial monkey off their back, as they at last broke their seemingly unending winless streak at nine games.
Fridgen could not have put it better, in response to Saturday’s victory, when he said, “we didn’t deserve to win that hockey game—we earned it.” Fridgen also said, “I’m so happy for the guys in that locker room. They worked so hard, and I couldn’t think of a better night to break out of it. It’s sort of in appreciation of the fans. Even though we’ve been struggling, they’ve stuck right behind us and we’re very appreciative of that.”
The Engineers play host to two more Ivy-League schools this coming weekend, when they host the 12th place Princeton Tigers on Friday night at the Field House and then the Yale Bulldogs on Saturday night. Both games start at 7 pm.
