On Friday night, the Engineers hit the ice in Cambridge, Mass., against the Harvard Crimson. RPI brandished a 5-2-2 record, and Harvard stood at 1-1-0; but there was a much slimmer margin of disparity between the two teams than it appeared, and the hometown Crimson handily beat the visiting Engineers by the score of 3-0 Friday night.
All evening, the Engineers seemed to pay for their penalties, and eventually drowned in a sea of Harvard power plays.
With 47 seconds left in the first period, Harvard freshman Alex Biega netted the go-ahead goal—and eventual winner—beating RPI goaltender junior Mathias Lange in a power play situation.
The Engineers had plenty of opportunities to change the outcome of the first period, but Crimson goaltender sophomore Kyle Richter made 11 saves to blank the RPI attack. He would finish with 28 and the shut out.
In the second, the momentum seemed to hang in the balance as Harvard failed to capitalize on two power plays against Lange and the Engineers defense, but the pressure never relented and the opportunities just kept coming.
Fittingly, in the third period, it was all Crimson, and the Engineers saw one more power play come back to haunt them. It was 11:53 in the third period when Harvard’s junior Brian McCafferty beat Lange high on a power play to give the hometown team a 2-0 advantage. Next to come was the nail in the coffin: RPI pulled Lange to add an additional man onto their own power play, only to see a shorthanded goal by defense junior Jack Christian put them away for the evening.
With the loss, RPI fell to 5-3-2 on the season and Harvard improved to 2-1-0. Lange saved 27 shots, allowing two of the three.
Despite the defeat, the Engineers still had one game to play, and headed up to Dartmouth College for a conference showdown with the Big Green.
It would not start well for the Engineers, with Dartmouth scoring against the sturdy junior Jordan Alford just 21 seconds into the first period; but something was driving the Engineers on Saturday night, and that spark came in the form of freshman forward Chase Polacek.
Trailing 1-0, the Engineers put together a power play attack five minutes in, with Polacek and classmate Tyler Helfrich feeding junior Andre Uryadov. Uryadov knotted the score at one all at 5:36 and then Polacek gave the Engineers the lead at 7:40 with a goal of his own.
Uryadov would strike again at 9:37 of the second period when a ricocheted shot off Alford got free. The fearsome Engineer would take it all the way down ice and beat Dartmouth’s senior Mike Devine for the score.
Holding a 3-1 advantage, the Engineers began threatening to fall into the same pattern that defeated them the night before in Massachusetts, getting themselves into more shorthanded situations; but this time, things would be different.
Despite RPI’s freshman Erik Burgdoerfer getting two minutes for interference at 15:29 in the second period, the Engineers’ senior captain Jake Morissette turned the tables on the Big Green and buried a one-timer behind Devine for the shorthanded tally and put RPI up 4-1.
But even still, the battle would go on.
Dartmouth’s freshman Scott Fleming made it 4-2 at 16:49 in the second period on another power play, but junior Matt Angers-Goulet came back with just 10 seconds remaining in the period to stretch the lead back to three.
The third period would prove to be just as hectic as the second with Morissette opening the scoring for Rensselaer at 12:53. Morissette’s second goal made the lead 6-2, but this would only hold for about three minutes as the Big Green answered back yet again.
Polacek tallied his second goal and fourth point of the night with an open net down-the-ice shot to close RPI’s scoring at seven.
The Big Green scored one last goal with just 27 seconds left to put the score at 7-4, but the game was out of reach and RPI prevailed.
After the dust had settled from this offensive slug-fest on Saturday night, the sixteenth-ranked Engineers found themselves in possession of a 6-3-2 record while Dartmouth fell to 3-2-0. Despite surrendering four goals, Alford made 32 saves en route to a 4-1-1 personal record. Dartmouth’s Devine had a rough night with just 16 saves and six goals against.
