By finishing with a .500 record in the ECACHL, the Engineers earned a home playoff berth in the first round against the Quinnipiac Bobcats, a team they took three out of four possible points from during the regular season.
In the playoffs, those statistics don’t matter, and Quinnipiac certainly proved that true, sweeping the Engineers 2-1 and 4-2, ending RPI’s season.
The Bobcats used the same formula for success in both games: get out to a fast start and never look back. Goalie Bud Fisher was also there to make key saves.
On Friday, Quinnipiac scored two goals in the opening 4:24 of the game. The first, at 3:09, came when Jamie Bates picked up a rebound, circled back in front of the net, and fired a wrist shot that beat Engineer freshman goalie Mathias Lange.
They doubled the lead just seven seconds into a power play. Mark Agnew cleanly won an offensive-zone faceoff back to defenseman Reid Cashman. Cashman crossed a pass from the point, and Quinnipiac’s goal-scoring leader David Marshall one-timed the puck home.
The fast start left the Engineers reeling. “I didn’t think that we came out moving our feet, and they did,” said RPI Head Coach Dan Fridgen.
Lange came up big in the first period to prevent the lead from widening, and the Engineers started to dictate the tempo of play in the game’s later stages. Junior Oren Eizenman scored on a rebound at 2:58 of the third, but the Engineers couldn’t solve Fisher with their other chances.
“I don’t know what we were thinking to start the game off, but they came out and just outworked us,” said Eizenman. “You really shoot yourselves in the foot coming out the way we did.”
RPI had a chance to tie the best-of-three series on Saturday night. Early on, it looked like the Engineers would have the intensity to stave off a repeat of Friday. Just 41 seconds in, with the Engineers on the power play, a point shot deflected to Eizenman in the slot, and he fired it over Fisher.
Despite the early deficit, Quinnipiac roared back and netted three goals in the first period—two on the power play—to go up 3-1. Ben Nelson tied it on the power play at 4:50, and Cashman had a point blast that found the net during a five-on-three at 13:55. Bates notched his 20th goal of the season—and second of the playoffs—at 18:50.
Junior Kevin Broad, skating in his first game since January 14 against Clarkson, brought the Engineers within one point late in the second period with his seventh goal of the season. It appeared at that point that momentum was swinging back to the Engineers.
Just 1:28 later, Quinnipiac retook the two-goal lead when John Kelly stole the puck in the neutral zone, skated in on Lange, and scored his second goal of the season.
“I thought we did a great job getting Kevin’s big goal there, but they turned around and got one right back, which broke our backs a little bit,” said Fridgen. “It was tough because we had all the momentum after Kevin scored to make it 3-2. I felt good on the bench, I think the guys felt real good, and the guy snaps one in. That game of comeback hockey is a tough game to play, especially when it’s two goals.”
The Engineers had nine shots on Fisher in the third but couldn’t even draw within one. When the final buzzer sounded, RPI’s season ended with a home sweep at the hands of the 10th-seeded Bobcats.
The losses also mark the end of the road for seven seniors: Chris Hussey, Keith MCWilliams, Scott Romfo, Alexander Valentin, Mark Yurkewecz, and captains Brad Farynuk and Kevin Croxton.
The mood was somber after Saturday’s loss, and Croxton, normally one of the Engineers’ most talkative players, was at a loss for words. “It’s tough,” he said. “It’s disappointing. They played a hell of a series. They played real well. I have no doubt in my mind that we left everything we had out there. For every shift, everybody went as hard as they could.”
Fridgen was pleased with Saturday’s effort and simply could not rationalize the losses. “It’s always a difficult situation when a season ends,” he said. “I thought we put it all out on the line. It seemed that when we made a mistake, we paid for that mistake.”
“I can’t explain how the littlest mistake would end up as a goal and yet, when they made the mistakes, we just weren’t able to capitalize at the right time,” he added.
Following the sweep, Fridgen took a moment to reflect on the season as a whole and the obstacles the team overcame throughout: “I thought, as a team, we really grew over the course of the season. We certainly finished higher than what we were picked at the preseason. We faced some adversity, and had some injuries—more this season than any I can remember. I thought guys did a great job of picking up the slack and really gelling together. These guys were very, very coachable this year.”
“There is a process to growth and development for student athletes when they go through a program and endure four years of doing well academically and playing at such a high level. They’re to be commended for it. It’s not like we left anything in the locker room; we left it all on the ice. That was very evident.”
RPI finishes the season with a 14-17-6 record, and the 8-8-6 mark in conference was tied for sixth. Among the seniors, Croxton’s 57-86-143 line in 147 games and Farynuk’s 18-61-79 line in 146 stand out the most.
This season was also the final one on Fridgen’s current contract. There has been no news from the athletic department on whether he will be considered for a new contract, but official word is that they hope to move quickly on the matter.
