Engineers freakin’ win the 47th Big Red Freakout

Rensselaer beat Yale to a frankly embarrassing 5-2 triumph against Yale last Saturday in the 47th annual Big Red Freakout, their biggest game of the season. After last year’s Freakout losses to Colgate in a shootout and to Brown in overtime, the Engineers were itching to give the fanbase a victory in the Field House.

The energy of the crowd was infectious , with over 4,500 fans packing the arena. The Engineer defensive stronghold, headed by Will Gilson, kept Yale offense at bay with 10 shots blocked in the first period. They maintained a disciplined guard of the net, a standard that Yale matched on the other side of the ice. Neither team scored until the end of the first period, when Yale set up an attack from behind the goal to sneak in a 1-0 Bulldog lead. Rensselaer immediately responded with Jake Gagnon sidestepping the defense to score off the assists by Gilson and Tyler Hotson to tie the game up with thirty seconds left in the period.

After a stagnant first half of the second period, Yale scored again but Rensselaer once again responded. This time it was Max Smolinski to the rescue, saving a failed transition score attempt. He was assisted by Jagger Tapper and Hotson, making it his second assist of the night. Three minutes later they followed it up with another goal from a great pass from Jack Brackett from behind the net to set up Felix Caron for the tie-breaking score, putting RPI up 3-2 to end the second period. RPI held the lead for all of the third quarter, culminating in a truly fantastic sequence. As soon as Yale took out their goalie and tried to score, Dovar Tinling sent a chip shot straight into the goal to increase the lead to two. Turns out that wasn’t the last of that; Yale kept their goalie out of the game, and this time Jakob Lee made a spectacular shot to blow the game open, this assisted by Noah Giesbrecht to cement the win at 5-2.

Engineer goalkeeper Giesbrecht was ultimately named Player of the Game, for his 33 saves in the Engineer net. Giesbrecht locked down the goal for Rensselaer after Yale’s second and final goal halfway through the second period, for his third-highest save percentage this season of .943. He pulled Rensselaer out of several close calls defensively, including a late third period shot that he blocked with his leg to maintain the Engineer’s one point lead. Giesbrecht’s outrageous control led Yale to take their own goalkeeper out of the net to try and force their way to overtime, a move that ended up backfiring. His assist in this game was his first of this season and of his career and will no doubt be remembered fondly over the rest of his career as goalkeeper.

Yale’s loss to the Engineers is their second of this season with no more opportunities for a rematch. The Engineers currently stand at a 10-14-2 record for the season, and a 5-9-0 record in the ECAC conference. Their next game will be this Friday, February 7 at Cornell, and their next home game will be against Princeton the following week. Click here for the box score.