Black Ice

Ooh. Darkness. Fun.

It's Black Friday Saturday Tuesday, which for the 11th straight season recognizes RPI's first home ECAC contest of the season. This year, it's also the first ECAC game period, so the winner tonight gets to be in first place all by their lonesome for three days. Fun.

Hard to take away much from last year's Harvard games. In November, when Harvard won 4-0 against RPI, the Engineers were at rock-bottom and had several healthy scratches in a "message sending" game from the locker room. In February, when RPI won 3-0 at home, the Crimson were approaching rock-bottom, having lost six in a row going into that contest.

One thing that is still true from February to today - while the players who left the program midseason as part of the cheating scandal at Harvard are back with the team, they won't play in any games until around Thanksgiving. That means the Crimson are likely going to improve around then... and RPI's getting them at the right time, since they can't see them until the ECAC Tournament at the earliest.

But Harvard won't be the pushovers that they seemed to be in February, either. This is a team brimming with offensive talent in the sophomore and freshman classes, and we saw last year what a team like that can do - it finished in 2nd place when it found some good defense. The Crimson shut out Bentley on Saturday, 3-0, but they had to stop 43 shots in order to do so. Something tells me RPI has a slightly better capacity to make those shots dent twine than do the Falcons.

The Engineers have struck paydirt in the first eight minutes of each of their last three victories. Getting ahead early and maintaining offensive pressure will be key tonight.

Getting Up For the Big Game

Before I start with this venting of frustration, let me get this out of the way: this is not an attack on Seth Appert. It is, however, a critique of the program under Coach Appert. Take from it what you will.

I got to thinking while sitting through the latest demolition of the Engineers, this time at the hands of Union (again). When was the last time we got to celebrate a blowout victory? It's something I thought of when I tried to find the last time RPI gave up six goals in a single period (I couldn't find it).

If we define a blowout as a four-goal-or-more separation in the final score, here are the blowouts of the Appert era.

October 21, 2006: Denver 5, RPI 1
December 9, 2006: Princeton 6, RPI 2
December 30, 2006: Union 5, RPI 1
January 5, 2007: Harvard 5, RPI 1
January 6, 2007: Dartmouth 6, RPI 2
January 12, 2007: Union 5, RPI 0
February 10, 2007: Cornell 6, RPI 1
December 15, 2007: Miami 7, RPI 3
December 16, 2007: Miami 5, RPI 1
January 12, 2008: Colgate 4, RPI 0
February 2, 2008: Princeton 4, RPI 0*
February 15, 2008: Colgate 4, RPI 0
February 16, 2008: Cornell 7, RPI 1
October 21, 2008: UMass 6, RPI 0
November 15, 2008: Quinnipiac 5, RPI 1
November 29, 2008: Northeastern 5, RPI 1
December 5, 2008: Yale 7, RPI 3
December 6, 2008: RPI 7, Brown 2
December 14, 2008: Miami 7, RPI 1
January 2, 2009: Boston University 6, RPI 2
January 10, 2009: RPI 5, Princeton 1
March 14, 2009: Cornell 4, RPI 0
December 30, 2009: Michigan State 6, RPI 1
February 20, 2010: Princeton 7, RPI 0*$
December 4, 2010: RPI 6, Brown 2
January 14, 2011: Cornell 5, RPI 1
January 22, 2011: RPI 5, Dartmouth 1
February 19, 2011: RPI 5, Clarkson 1
March 26, 2011: North Dakota 6, RPI 0
October 14, 2011: Ferris State 4, RPI 0
November 15, 2011: Union 5, RPI 1
December 29, 2011: UMass-Lowell 7, RPI 2
January 14, 2012: Union 5, RPI 1
January 27, 2012: RPI 4, St. Lawrence 0
February 4, 2012: Colgate 8, RPI 3*
February 18, 2012: Princeton 6, RPI 2$
March 2, 2012: RPI 5, Clarkson 1
November 3, 2012: Union 7, RPI 3
* - Big Red Freakout!
$ - Senior Night

That's a record of 7-31 in blowout games. By the definition of Saturday's game, we did win a pair of blowout contests last season, against the North Country teams (and one in the playoffs, no less). But by and large, they're fairly hard to come by. The NCAA tournament team of 2010-11 only posted three themselves. Up the requirement to five goals, and the record diminishes to 1-10. No matter how you slice it, the team's blowout to blownout ratio... sucks.

Then it struck me that a lot of the blowout losses were in "big" games. The NCAA tournament game, of course, but, like many (but not all) of the other non-conference games on that list, RPI was simply matched up against a far superior team (especially early in Appert's tenure - the 3 games against Miami, for instance).

So what constitutes a "big game?" Well, Freakout! would seem to qualify. Union has become our biggest rival, a team we play three times a year (at least), so that's one. Senior Night is usually supposed to be added incentive to win. Of course, the playoffs.

Freakout! record: 1-4-1 (12 GF, 28 GA)
Senior night record: 0-5-1 (8 GF, 24 GA)
Union record: 4-16-3 (46 GF, 81 GA)
ECAC playoff record: 7-13-0 (2-6 in series)

Three of the blowout losses were at Big Red Freakout! Two were on Senior Night (although to be fair, in 2010 Freakout! was held on Senior Night). Five were against Union, which tallies to more blowout losses against the Dutchmen than we have wins, period (and again, to be fair, Union has gotten very good).

The saving grace, really, is Black Friday, where the team can boast a 4-2-1 record under Appert - though both losses are in the last two years. And if you're still holding onto Clarkson as the main rival, that record is 5-9-1 with both teams scoring 43 goals in the 15 games - somewhat better than against Union, but again, Union has been better than Clarkson in the last six years.

What else is there? Well, why not throw in tournament play? Although the titles they confer are mostly a matter of bragging rights, the usual ambiguity as to the second night's opponent and the opportunity to play for some hardware makes a tournament a little bigger than your average non-conference fare.

2006 Governor's Cup: Champions
2006 RPI Tournament: 3rd Place
2006 Catamount Cup: 4th Place
2007 Icebreaker: 4th Place
2007 Governor's Cup: Champions
2007 RPI Tournament: 2nd Place
2007 Lightning Classic: 4th Place
2008 Governor's Cup: 3rd Place
2008 RPI Tournament: 4th Place
2009 Denver Cup: 4th Place
2009 Alaska Goal Rush: 4th Place
2009 RPI Tournament: 2nd Place
2009 Great Lakes Invitational: 2nd Place
2010 RPI Tournament: Champions
2011 UConn Hockey Classic: 4th Place
Overall record: 8-17-5

Now, it's hardly fair to fault some of these poor results, especially the 2007 Icebreaker (Minnesota, BC, and Michigan) and the Lightning Classic (Notre Dame, Colorado College, and UMass), and the big win against Michigan came at the '09 GLI, but some of these tournaments, especially the last one, were simply putrid. Losses to Niagara, Mercyhurst, Army, and Holy Cross, and a tie with American International are strewn throughout.

What am I trying to say here? I'm not really sure I'm saying anything other than trying to quantify frustration. Some of the early teams Appert coached were just rough squads that were low on talent. But as the talent level has picked up, these trends of underperforming in key games hasn't really changed much. Possibly, the disparity in blowouts to being blown out could point to an inadequate strategy when playing from behind. I have no clue.

I do know one thing, though. Appert likes to say that every game is equally important. On some level that's true. All games factor into the Pairwise Rankings, and every ECAC game is worth two points. But on an emotional level, for both players and fans, certain games hold more meaning to them. Union, even when they were a joke on the ice, always managed to get up for RPI. Today, even with a team that will be written into their (new) history books as an all-time great lineup, they still manage to get a little something extra for RPI, a team that, by recent history, they should have every right to overlook. Those big wins develop momentum, and although that can change from shift to shift and period to period, the game to game momentum is just as important, and nothing kills spirit like a big loss in a big game.

Black Ice

Well, the site's black again. That can mean only one thing - Black Friday.

Take a trip down memory lane... a visit to Black Fridays past. Remember these unis?
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
(special thanks to rpihockey.net and photographer Charlene Markham - great supporters of RPI Hockey!)

Yes, friends, this year marks the 10th version of Black Friday... time flies. Looking forward to seeing the Men in Black tonight, but RPI kicks off with a tough weekend for sure - the home and home against the second Frozen Four team they've played in a month's time, Union.

The Dutchmen haven't started out this season as the same dominant force they were last year, but they still pack quite a punch. RPI may have skated with them well last March, but mistakes became costly and that'll almost certainly be the tale this weekend, too.

For your pump-up enjoyment... here's a thematic diddy from Mr. Robert Zombie and his friend Iggy Pop.

The Big Game

Something was striking about Seth Appert's pre-weekend chat with the media last week:

"We don't put emphasis on one game over the other. We've tried to flush that mentality out of our team. That was the mentality when we got here, that it was important to get up for some games and others weren't as important. You will never win at the highest levels like that... Winning programs treat every game like it's the most important game of the season, and that's why I make that statement that it's so important that we treat all the games with that urgency. Not just Black Friday, or Freakout, or Clarkson, or Cornell, or whatever it is."


That was in response to a question about the 8-3 loss to Colgate in the Freakout, which is the fourth loss by three or more goals in that game in the last five years. That immediately followed a 17-year unbeaten streak during which it was pretty much standard procedure for ECAC teams to hope their visit to Troy didn't coincide with the game. Before this stretch, RPI had only lost by three in the Freakout three times (1981, 1982, 1986). It might be safe to say that if RPI isn't getting up for the Freakout, the opponents certainly seem to be.

With a 17-year stretch of no losses in the Freakout, maybe it's safe to agree with Appert that under Buddy Powers and Dan Fridgen, Freakout was considered an important game. But even if you try to claim it's the same as all the others, there are plenty of things that set it apart. The building is full and louder than usual. The team wears the road jerseys instead of the home jerseys. There are plenty of events surrounding the game, including a post-game appearance at the Alumni House with tons of alums. Frequently, it's on TV.

Yes, every ECAC game, at the end of the day, is worth two points. From a holistic standpoint, the game in November at home against Union is worth the same as the game in early January against Dartmouth is worth the same on the last day of the season at Cornell. But from a realistic standpoint, are all of these games really of the same value? Probably not. For one, we know more about positioning late in the season than we do early in the season. The games might be worth the same number of points, and of course we want to take as many points as possible - we want 44 when the season starts.

But just as all teams have ebbs and flows, so does the schedule. Appert points to last year's games in Alabama as reasons why the Engineers went to the national tournament, and one could make an argument along those lines. One could make an argument that since we were the last ones in and Dartmouth the first ones out, the season sweep of Dartmouth was more important. An objective observer could say that Alabama-Huntsville's win over Nebraska-Omaha put us in over Dartmouth, which brings us back to the importance of the UAH victories, of course, but nonetheless, those weren't exactly the best games RPI played last year.

Union gets up for RPI, there's no question. You can see if in the interviews done with their players before and after games. Beating RPI is the most important thing in the world, and it doesn't compare with beating, say, Princeton. But those games are worth the same number of points. There's even a third game that's worth no points, which this year, if you asked them, marked a major turning point of the year.

There's no game that can be taken easy, but unless you've already got a championship caliber team, there will naturally be some games that just are not as important as others. That's not to say that you don't want to see teams give 100% in every game, far from it. It's just psychologically difficult to make every single game the most important game of the year - especially this season. How could that midweek game against AIC possibly be as important as, for instance, a game against Cornell on national television?

So why not set yourself some benchmarks? When you're standing on that goal line before the Freakout trying to convince yourself that this game is no more important than the next, or the last, aren't you psyching yourself down a bit from a natural lift?

In years past, it was not unusual to hear players speaking with pride about the importance of certain games, and it wasn't uncommon to see big wins in big games provide boosts for future contests. Ask the 2001-02 Engineers what that big Freakout win did for them going forward - or if you like, just look at the schedule.

It's rare to see us disagree with Seth Appert, but for me, this is what it boils down to: when no game is more important than another, no game is really that important.

Game #10: Yale

Short staff tonight, so we're only going to have men's live tweets tonight - though we'll have some score updates on the women during the intermissions.

Here's your twitter feed.

Always bet on black.

Fade to Black

Apologies for the lack of content this week. Combination of a hectic week and a general lack of additional things to say about both teams' struggles - that led to a lack of a podcast too, which we'll remedy next week. We had wanted to do a Black Friday jersey retrospective pictorial yesterday, but couldn't secure the necessary permissions for use of the pictures.

Anyway... moving on. Jacob Laliberte returns to the lineup tonight, just in time for Black Friday, which has traditionally been a winning proposition for the Engineers. They are 7-0-1 all time in the black uniforms and have not lost the league home opener since 2002 - the year before the advent of Black Friday. There have been some pretty rough teams in that stretch - and there have been some pretty difficult opponents as well, but the worst result thus far has been walking away with a tie in 2007 against Yale, who appears in their record third Black Friday tonight (no other team has featured more than once).

The women are in a must win situation as well, facing a Brown/Yale road weekend in which their opponents have 2 and 0 points respectively. If they can't walk away with some serious points this weekend, they're going to be in a desperate battle all season long to make the playoffs.

Here it is... our third annual Black Friday pumpup.