Upcoming Podcast: Ken Schott

Our first official podcast - since our last one wasn't advertised ahead of time - will come to you live tomorrow, September 17th, at 7:30pm EDT.

Our scheduled guest is the veritable King of the ECAC Media, the Schenectady Daily Gazette's Ken Schott. We'll talk about the upcoming season in the ECAC and discuss the latest development of the wild 2010 offseason, the coming storm that is Penn State.

Be sure to tune in! If you've got a question for Ken, you can call in at (310) 742-1841.

The player below will have our most recent broadcast.

Listen to internet radio with Without a Peer on Blog Talk Radio

Women's Hockey - 2010-11 Season Preview

With the season set to get underway in just 10 days, it's high time we take a look at what the coming year has in store for the Engineers. In the coming week we'll be breaking down the ECAC, a few teams at a time, before bringing you an overall ECAC preview to wrap things up before the team hits the ice on 9/25 for their opening game, an exhibition against the University of Montreal.

RPI will play 34 games this season, including one exhibition, 11 non-conference tilts, and 22 ECAC matchups. The opposition comes from 19 teams, including last year's national runner-up Cornell, 8 teams who spent at least a week in the top 10 of the USCHO.com Division I poll, and a range of talent that spans from Wisconsin (a perennial power who finished 34-2-5 en route to the national championship two seasons ago) to Union (who has won just 17 games in the past 5 seasons combined). All in all, the season stands to be an interesting one, with the Engineers being put to the test by several top teams - before October comes to an end.

As noted, the season opens on 9/25 against the University of Montreal, in its second season overall and first in CIS, the Canadian college league. Montreal is well-respected in CIS for many of its teams, but its hockey team is a relative unknown due to its youth. Most importantly, it gives the Engineers a chance to get their feet under them in a game that doesn’t count, as they waste no time jumping into the thick of things by hitting the road for a pair of games in Madison against Wisconsin on 10/1 and 10/2.

RPI returns to Houston Field House the following two weeks, where they play a pair against Vermont on 10/8 and 10/9, and a single game against New Hampshire on 10/15. The Engineers are 6-8-0 all-time against Vermont, but haven’t won a game against the Catamounts since 2000, in an ECAC Division III tournament game. RPI played New Hampshire for the first time last season, blowing a 3-1 lead to lose 4-3 in regulation – thanks primarily to Kelly Paton’s hat trick for the Wildcats.

Next up is a Friday/Sunday pair against Hockey East’s Providence and Northeastern on 10/22 and 10/24. Providence was the Hockey East regular season champion last year, and Northeastern finished tied for second with UNH and BU, so expect this to be a tough test for RPI. Providence boasted the second best offense in Hockey East last season, averaging 2.81 goals per game in conference play. Northeastern had the second stingiest defense in the conference, allowing just 1.62 goals per game. The contrast should be a good chance to see how RPI can adapt to different styles of play without a week to prepare.

RPI opens its ECAC schedule the following weekend at St. Lawrence and Clarkson on 10/29 and 10/30, before a pair at home against Princeton and Quinnipiac 11/5 and 11/6, and another week on the road taking on Yale and Brown 11/12 and 11/13. We won’t get into the specifics on the ECAC matchups here, but will break each one down in the coming ECAC previews.

11/19 and 11/20 have Niagara paying a visit to the Field House. The Engineers went 1-0-1 against the Purple Eagles last season, who return top scorer Jenna Hendrikx (14-10-24) and starting goalie Jenni Bauer (.915%, 2.25GAA). Niagara loses nine seniors, 6 of whom were regular starters last season, so expect to see a younger team take the ice than we saw last season.

RPI travels to Syracuse after Thanksgiving, for a pair of games on 11/26 and 11/27. The Orange took a pair of games against RPI in Troy last season by one goal each, en route to an 18-17-1 finish in just their second season as a Division I club. Syracuse brings in the top rated high school goalie in Minnesota, Kallie Billadeau, who was a teammate of RPI freshman Missy Mankey on the Hopkins HS team last season. Aside from outgoing goalie Lucy Schoedel, Syracuse graduated just two players after the 09-10 season, so they should prove to be a tough and experienced team this season.

RPI closes out the first half of the season before the holidays with a home-and-home against Union, in Schenectady on 12/3 and Troy on 12/4. The Engineers play four in a row at home after the break, taking on Dartmouth, Harvard, Cornell, and Colgate on 1/7, 8, 14, and 15 respectively. Two weekends on the road follow as RPI heads east to take on Harvard and Dartmouth on 1/21 and 1/22 before heading west to face Colgate and Cornell on 1/28 and 1/29.

The Engineers enter the home stretch of the season in February with a pair at home against Brown and Yale on 2/4 and 2/5, travel to Quinnipiac and Princeton on 2/11 and 2/12, and close out the season at home on 2/18 against Clarkson and Senior Night on 2/19 against St. Lawrence.

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Coach Burke has put together a solid non-conference schedule this season, as he has reliably done the past several seasons. RPI has a chance to get some good experience on the ice before heading into the ECAC schedule, but there are still some big question marks about this year's team. As we discussed early in the summer when reviewing the graduating seniors and incoming freshmen, RPI’s success on the ice this season is going to boil down to two main points – can the upperclassmen and new freshmen forwards generate enough offense to overcome the loss of last year’s seniors, and can Sonja van der Bliek continue to be one of the top goalies in the ECAC in her senior season?

Either one would make life a lot easier for the Engineers. If they manage both, the potential is there for another successful season.

Check back on Friday when we break down RPI’s first four ECAC opponents – St. Lawrence, Clarkson, Princeton, and Quinnipiac.

Know Your Enemy: St. Lawrence

Much like Clarkson, the Saints are another team that the Engineers are very familiar with - St. Lawrence has the second most games played against RPI by just one game (131 against Clarkson, 130 against SLU), and that's a function, like Clarkson, of having been part of the same league as the Engineers since the formation of the Tri-State League in 1950.

St. Lawrence
Nickname: Saints
Location: Canton, NY
Founded: 1856
Conference: ECAC
National Championships: 0
Last NCAA Appearance: 2007
Last Frozen Four: 2000
Coach: Joe Marsh (26th season)
2009-10 Record: 19-16-7 (9-8-5 ECAC, 5th place)
Series: SLU leads, 74-50-6
First Game: January 3, 1951 (Troy, NY)
Last RPI win: January 23, 2009 (Canton, NY)
Last SLU win: November 14, 2009 (Canton, NY)

2010-11 games: January 8, 2010 (Troy, NY); February 18, 2011 (Canton, NY)
Key players: F Aaron Bogosian, sr.; F Kyle Flanagan, so.; F Greg Carey, fr.; F Jeremy Wick, fr.; D Matt Raley, sr.; D Peter Child, jr.; D George Hughes, so.; D Justin Baker, fr.

Key losses: F Travis Vermeulen, F Mike McKenzie, F Brandon Bollig, F Alex Curran, D Derek Keller, D Jeff Caister, G Kain Tisi, G Alex Petizian

That list of losses for St. Lawrence is jaw dropping. It includes Brandon Bollig, who left with two years of eligibility still on the table, and really completes the bad news in Canton - practically every name on that list was a major part of a St. Lawrence team that made an appearance in Albany last season.

Hockey at St. Lawrence doesn't date back as far as it does at some other schools in the ECAC, but it's close enough - informal teams started after World War I, and the Saints played their first two official games in 1926. Fittingly, both games were against Clarkson, but SLU would not earn their first victory over their local rivals until 1943, after having no hockey throughout most of the 1930s. The Saints would be suspended for World War II following that 1943 campaign, returning in 1947.

In 1950, the year before the Tri-State League first started playing, the Saints went undefeated, winning all nine games on their schedule. A bigger schedule may have seen them playing in the NCAA Tournament, but an appearance would indeed be right around the corner under the tutelages of Olav Kollevoll and George Menard. Kollevoll brought the Saints to their first NCAA showing in 1952, the beginning of what would be a very dominant decade for St. Lawrence. Two years later, only an even more dominant RPI team kept the Saints from the NCAAs despite a record of 18-3-1. But from 1955 (Kollevoll's final season) through 1962, the Saints made six NCAA tournament appearances, giving them seven in ten years. The national semifinals were not kind to St. Lawrence, however, as the Saints advanced to the national championship game only once in seven tries - beating RPI 6-3 in the 1961 Frozen Four before losing to Denver 12-2, the second-most lopsided national championship game in NCAA history.

The Saints were able to extend their dominance into the mid-1960s, as they won the very first ECAC championship in 1962 and had their first 20-win season ever in 1963 (although they would not qualify for what would have been a 5th consecutive NCAA appearance). Menard managed to keep the team competitive into the early 1970s despite some rough seasons in the mid-60s, but he departed the team in 1971 after three consecutive seasons at .500 or below.

The 1970s, generally, were a bit of a lost decade in Canton, under the guidance of Bernie McKinnon and former RPI and BU head coach Leon Abbott. From 1969 through 1981, the Saints managed only a single winning campaign, a 15-13-0 record in 1973. The four years under Abbott from 1976 though 1980 were especially bad, as SLU lost 20 games in three of those seasons after never having lost more than 17 in any given year, capped by Abbott's final year in Canton, the 1979-80 season, in which the Saints went 6-26-0, setting a program record for losses in a season that stands to this day as St. Lawrence finished in last place in the ECAC for the first (and to date, only) time.

The renaissance began under head coach Mike McShane, who would replace Abbott following that dismal season in 1980. While McShane would ultimately become a college hockey legend farther on down the road at Providence and especially at Norwich (where he has won three D-III national titles, including the 2010 title), he got the ball rolling immediately while cutting his teeth as a head coach in Canton. He returned the Saints to a near-.500 record in 1980-81, arguably the team's best season at that point in almost a decade. Two years after that - only three years removed from that awful 1979-80 season, the team set a school record for wins in a season with 23 and made their first NCAA tournament appearance in over 20 years.

While RPI was building dominant teams in the early 1980s, St. Lawrence was right there as well. They were notable for being the only team to knock off the juggernaut Engineers in regulation during the 1984-85 season, which would be McShane's final year in Canton, the fourth straight winning season for SLU for the first time since the early 60s. McShane would, however, leave the team in very capable hands - a young UNH grad who had been one of his assistants, Joe Marsh.

Marsh would pick up where McShane left off in the late 1980s before writing his name as the greatest coach in St. Lawrence history over the years since. The Saints would return to the NCAA tournament in 1987, the first of three consecutive appearances that included ECAC titles in 1988 and 1989, an overall record of 82-27-0, and the team's second appearance in the national championship game in 1988. That experience was far better than the previous title game showing as the Saints were ostensibly the home team playing just down the road in Lake Placid, but St. Lawrence lost a heartbreaker to Lake Superior State, 4-3 in overtime. Just eight seasons after reaching the lowest valley in the program's history, the Saints had come within just a single goal of reaching the top of the college hockey world.

With the exception of a few seasons in the middle of the decade, Marsh kept the Saints competitive throughout much of the 1990s. They claimed another ECAC title in 1992, which was the fifth 20-win campaign in six seasons, and after a rough rebuilding patch in 1997 and 1998, St. Lawrence finished the 90s back at the top of the ECAC, reaching the NCAA tournament three consecutive times from 1999 to 2001, including a fantastic 2000 season in which the Saints won their very first ECAC regular season title - their first meaningful regular season title of any kind since the days of the Tri-State League - and won their first of two consecutive ECAC championships. They also made their ninth Frozen Four appearance in 2000.

The 2000s, as a decade, were best described as "feast or famine" in Canton. From 2002 through 2005, the team hit a rough streak of four straight losing seasons (including three in a row with 20 losses), but two years later, in 2007, the Saints nabbed their second ECAC regular season title and made an NCAA tournament appearance. A 20-loss season followed in 2008, and a 20-win season came down in 2009.

Last year, St. Lawrence proved a formidable opponent, especially for RPI fans, who saw the Engineers take only one point in a pair of games that were outright wars. Solid senior goaltending from Kain Tisi and, to a lesser extent, Alex Petizian, keyed the Saints while outstanding scoring touch from Travis Vermeulen (who doubled as a defensive threat, as evidenced by his award as the ECAC's best defensive forward), Mike McKenzie, and Brandon Bollig, among others made SLU a dangerous team to contend with on a nightly basis.

As mentioned at the top, all of those names are now gone, all at the same time. The Saints' lone returning goaltender, Robby Moss, is a junior with all of 10 games of NCAA experience. The amount of scoring that the team has lost since last season is staggering - they return the least amount of offense from last season in the ECAC. The only two proven offensive threats are senior Aaron Bogosian and sophomore Kyle Flanagan, who had been an early contender for Rookie of the Year before being sidelined with an injury. Flanagan would return to appear in 13 ECAC games, but had only 7 assists down the stretch.

The Saints' one saving grace may be a talented but still largely young group of defensemen, including sophomore George Hughes, who was one of the best freshmen defensemen in the league last season, and junior Peter Child, who has shown some decent puck moving ability at the blue line. But the question marks still abound for the entire team. Where is the scoring going to come from? Is the goaltending going to be acceptable? Hard to say on either front. Even if the Saints are able to get significant contributions from its incoming freshmen, it's very difficult to excel in the ECAC with the bulk of your top players lacking experience. Just look at the last few RPI squads.

Joe Marsh, the dean of the ECAC Hockey coaching fraternity since Tim Taylor's departure four years ago, has been known to wrest more from his teams than most observers reasonably expected from time to time, but the Saints aren't one of those teams that have always been in the mix regardless of who they've had on their squad, especially over the past decade. If the answers to all of the questions the Saints have aren't obvious, it may be a tough year in Canton. Combined with the questions Clarkson has, it's likely to make for an eerie season in which the usually feared North Country trip - a trip that still exists as a perpetual home boost for both schools - may not seem so feared anymore.

Now With 30% More Fiber!

We mentioned at the top of the summer that we would be looking to expand our coverage here at Without a Peer. We're a fan blog, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to drop in on us for most of your RPI Hockey needs. We'll still be bringing you the news, opinion, live tweets and juvenile humor you've come to expect, but there's so much more potential out there than just weekly roundups and oddball photoshops. So we've got a whole slew of new features that you should be able to look forward to as we creep up on the start of a brand new season.

The Without a Peer podcast: This one is already underway, in fact, we conducted a dry run last night. It was an hour long presentation in which we touched on some of the key things to watch for around the men's and women's college hockey universes and chatted with NBC Sports' Joe Yerdon (also an occasional WaP contributor) about the outlook for the men's ECAC this season. It wasn't advertised ahead of time because we wanted to get a dress rehearsal in before committing to doing regular podcasts - but it turned out very well, so we're proud to offer it to you right now. We still haven't landed on a regular schedule for the near future, but we'll have another one before the men's schedule gets underway and we'll let you know well in advance what the schedule will look like.

You can already check out the Without a Peer podcast homepage at Blog Talk Radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/withoutapeer/ (We'll have a little widget over to the left eventually). From there, you can play the podcast from last night on demand.

In-game chats: Can't make it to the game? Well, you've got options. Old and busted: Message board game threads. New hotness: Live in-game chatter with your fellow fans! Seriously, it's 2010, who has time to hit the refresh button 200 times an hour to see what your RPI compatriots are saying about the game in progress? Early in the season, we're planning to do a test-run over the course of the first five games - the New Brunswick exhibition, the Colorado College games, and the Northeastern/Bentley weekend - to gauge whether to make this a regular feature. We think you'll enjoy the instant gratification that'll come with being able to interact with other members of Puckman Nation more easily.

Mid-week chats: Want to know how your favorite Engineer feels about upcoming opponent? Want to ask him or her about something that happened in another game? Dying to know what their favorite color is? Need to needle a member of the media on a recent opinion piece? Well, look no further than Without a Peer. With the cooperation of the RPI athletic department, we are planning to bring you occasional moderated chats with players, coaches, personnel, and local media figures (when it can be fit into their busy schedules) to give you some first-hand insight into the Engineers, the ECAC, and the NCAA.

More interviews: We've already brought you a handful of interviews last season and a couple of media interviews this offseason, but we plan to pick even more brains in the near future - occasionally in conjunction with the podcast, but if there's someone out there who doesn't have the time to appear with us on the air, we'll be sure to get their thoughts regardless.

A sparkly new logo! Keep your eyes peeled - as with any product upgrade, there's always going to be at least some minor rebranding.

While all of these features will be offered to you, our dear readers, for the low, low price of FREE, not all of them will be free to us, the site administrators. In an effort to keep advertising away from WaP as much as possible, we are instead going to put a donation button at the top of the page on the right. If you enjoy Without a Peer regularly, we'd like to ask you to consider hitting the tip jar to help us offset some of the costs of operating a modern website. Don't worry, you won't be contributing to expensive dinners or the beer fund - 100% of the proceeds from the donation button will be put directly into Without a Peer. Anything you can offer will be much appreciated not only by Gary and myself, but other readers as well.

I know exactly what you're thinking - what would legendary pitchman Billy Mays have to say about all of these new WaP features? Well... I think he'd approve.

Know Your Enemy: Clarkson

The next team is one that needs no introduction to RPI fans. The Engineers have faced the Golden Knights 131 times, more than any other single team. They are the traditional rivals for two important reasons - like RPI, Clarkson is known for its engineering programs, and the teams have been playing together in the same league for 60 consecutive seasons. The fact that Clarkson nearly always has an outstanding team only serves to fuel the flames on the RPI side, and although Clarkson's biggest rival will always be St. Lawrence, there's a special level of dislike reserved for RPI as well.

Clarkson
Nickname: Golden Knights
Location: Potsdam, NY
Founded: 1896
Conference: ECAC
National Championships: 0
Last NCAA Appearance: 2008
Last Frozen Four: 1991
Coach: George Roll (8th season)
2009-10 Record: 9-24-4 (4-15-3 ECAC, 12th place)
Series: Clarkson leads, 80-43-8
First Game: January 24, 1925 (Troy, NY)
Last RPI win: February 6, 2010 (Troy, NY)
Last CU win: February 27, 2009 (Troy, NY)

2010-11 games: January 7, 2011 (Troy, NY); February 19, 2011 (Potsdam, NY)
Key players: F Brandon DeFazio, sr.; F Scott Freeman, sr.; F Louke Oakley, jr.; F Nick Tremblay, jr.; F Corey Tamblyn, jr.; F Adam Pawlick, so.; F Allan McPherson, fr.; D Bryan Rufenach, sr.; D Mark Borowiecki, jr.; D Nik Pokulok, so.; G Paul Karpowich, jr.

Key losses: F Matt Beca, D Jeremiah Crowe

Clarkson hockey has long had the impressive claim of possessing the highest winning percentage in the history of Division I college hockey, but that claim has recently regressed to merely being "among the best" due to a few difficult seasons of late, the most recent of which may well, by a number of different metrics, be considered the worst in the history of the program. Generally speaking, however, the program is at the very least notable as the most successful program that has never claimed an NCAA championship.

Hockey at Clarkson had humble beginnings in the mid-1910s, when students would gather on the frozen Raquette River to take on teams from the local Native American reservation. The varsity program officially got its start in 1921, earning a winning season in its very first year, which would be a sign of things (eventually) to come, though the Knights struggled through the rest of the early 1920s with a record of 13-19-1 over their first six seasons. The 1927 season would get the tradition of winning going in earnest, as Clarkson went 8-1-0 for the first of 12 consecutive seasons running through 1938, during which the Knights went 108-28-2.

In 1939, the Golden Knights moved into what was then called Clarkson Arena (later Walker Arena), an on-campus indoor rink. The building underscored how deeply the hockey program was becoming associated with the school, considering that Clarkson had a total enrollment around 500 students at the time, and indoor rinks were still rare even at schools that were four times that size.

The program was suspended in 1945 due to World War II for two seasons, but when the team returned, new coach Bill Harrison was ready to build them into a high-powered program. In 1950 the Knights, along with RPI, St. Lawrence, Colgate, Williams, and Middlebury, were inaugural members of the Tri-State League, one of the earliest formally organized leagues in the history of college hockey. Clarkson claimed the league's first championship with a 12-2-1 record overall, and while the Knights took a back seat to some dominant RPI teams in the early 1950s, the middle of the decade would produce perhaps the greatest Clarkson team ever, if not one of greatest teams in the history of the game.

The 1955-56 Golden Knights dominated practically every game they played, turning in an amazing 23-0-0 record, the first unbeaten, untied season in the modern era, and earned their first invitation to the NCAA tournament, where they likely would have been favorites. Unfortunately, due to NCAA regulations at the time, eight seniors on the team were in their fourth year playing on the team, while student-athletes were only allowed three seasons at the varsity level. The team could still play, but those eight seniors would be ineligible. Rather than play without them, Clarkson turned down the invitation.

Harrison would guide the Knights to two additional NCAA invitations in the following two seasons which were accepted, but Clarkson could not get past the semifinal round, taking third place both years. In all, over Harrison's final four years in Potsdam, the Golden Knights were a ridiculous 75-8-0 outside of NCAA tournament play. Harrison, who was also a civil engineering professor, left the program in 1958. His replacement, Len Ceglarski, would on three occasions take the Golden Knights to the brink of the national championship over the course of his 14 seasons at the helm.

In Ceglarski's second season in 1960, Clarkson won only 7 games, but it would be the last time the team failed to reach the 10-win mark for nearly a half-century. It would also be Ceglarski's only losing season in Potsdam - two years later, in the first season of the ECAC, he guided the Golden Knights to their very first national championship game, where they dropped a 7-1 game to Michigan Tech despite being the nominal home team in Utica. The Knights would return to the NCAA tournament in 1963, and in 1966 won their first ECAC championship and reached the national championship game a second time, losing 6-1 to Michigan State. Four years later, the Knights would reach their third, and to date, last national championship game, coming close to ruining league rival Cornell's unbeaten and untied season, but losing 6-4 in Lake Placid.

Ceglarski would leave Clarkson in 1972 to take over the program at Boston College. His replacement would be a Boston College alum who would cut his teeth at Clarkson before going on to become a legend himself - Jerry York. York's seven year tenure in Potsdam was light on hardware, as the Knights won only the 1977 ECAC regular season title during his time behind the bench, but he continued the expectation of excellence. His second and third seasons (1974 and 1975) were the first losing seasons in 12 years and would be the last losing seasons for over a quarter-century afterwards. One of York's legacies at Clarkson is in recruiting perhaps the greatest player in school history, Dave Taylor.

York left for Bowling Green in 1979, but Clarkson didn't miss a beat in the 1980s under Bill O'Flaherty and Cap Raeder, making three more NCAA appearances in 1981, 1982, and 1984. Mark Morris' arrival in 1988, however, turned things up a notch in Potsdam. The 1990s were a truly dominant decade for Clarkson, as Morris led the team to 10 consecutive 20-win seasons from 1990 to 1999, a stretch which included 4 ECAC regular season titles, 3 ECAC championships, and 9 NCAA appearances - every season but their 20-9-5 year in 1993-94, largely stopped that year by an upset from RPI in Lake Placid - and a Frozen Four appearance in 1991. All told, the Golden Knights were 303-156-42 under Morris.

The party ended in 2002 under controversial circumstances. After the Knights uncharacteristically opened the 2002-o3 season with three losses, Morris was suspended after striking a player during a practice session. That year, under interim coach Fred Parker, the Knights limped to their first losing season since 1975, and lost 20 games for the first time in school history - the previous high had been 15.

Former Oswego State head coach George Roll was hired the following season, and his seven seasons have been something of a mixed bag. The program struggled through his first three years as Roll recruited the players he needed to run his system, and those struggles paid off in 2007 and 2008 as the Golden Knights had back-to-back 20-win seasons and NCAA appearances for the first time since the long stretch in the 1990s, the ECAC championship in 2007, the ECAC regular season title in 2008. That season, the Knights came within a goal of playing in their 8th Frozen Four.

But the last two years have been dismal indeed. Clarkson has a record of only 19-43-11 since coming that close to the ECAC's first Frozen Four appearance since 2003. Last year was particularly difficult, as the young team was ravaged by injuries all season long after starting the season with a legal controversy with two freshman defensemen that left them shorthanded on the blue line all season long even before the injuries. The 9-24-4 season re-established the school record for losses in a season and represented the first time since 1960 that the team failed to reach at least 10 wins. Additionally, the Golden Knights finished in dead last on the ECAC table for the first time in school history.

The numbers underscore how difficult the season was last year for Clarkson. The Knights had the worst offense, led only Brown's dismal defense, and put up the worst power play numbers in the ECAC on their way to finishing 12th by 5 points behind the 11th place Bears.

It doesn't get much easier from there. Matt Beca represented nearly 20% of the Knights' offense with 20 goals and 18 assists, and he will not be back. The good news is that Clarkson did have several young players in the high single-digits in goals, including Tremblay, Tamblyn, and Pawlick- one or more of those players will need to step up this season for the Golden Knights to bounce back. McPherson arrives in Potsdam after a 40-goal campaign in the COJHL last season, he could be a much needed shot in the arm. Also, former Engineer Mark Zarbo's younger brother Matt joins the Golden Knights this season.

Defensively, junior goaltender Paul Karpowich is going to need to display some of the promise that led the St. Louis Blues to draft him back in 2008. The difficulty that he has had in replacing David Leggio, who was the stalwart in net on those back-to-back NCAA teams, has been a big part of Clarkson's struggles over the last couple of seasons. His numbers as a freshman were mediocre and atrocious last season - although at least some of that can be chalked up to the issues the Knights had on defense in front of him.

The Golden Knights were terribly young last year - Beca and Crowe were two of only three seniors on the team - but a number of the remaining players are going to have to have much better seasons this year if Clarkson is going to vie for home ice in the playoffs. If not, it could well be another season of fans scratching their heads and asking out loud - "is this really Clarkson?"

Every Picture Tells a Story

We're coming up on Labor Day weekend, and even though it may not feel like it outside just yet, we're just three weeks away from hockey at Houston Field House when the women take on the University of Montreal in an exhibition game at 4 p.m. on September 25th ahead of their trip to Wisconsin the following weekend. A week later, the men take part in the Cherry and White intrasquad scrimmage on October 2nd at 4 p.m., to be followed at 7 p.m. by an AHL preseason game between the Adirondack Phantoms and the Albany Devils. Three days after that, on Tuesday, October 5th 7 p.m., the men will face the University of New Brunswick in an exhibition matchup ahead of their trip to Colorado the following weekend.

In the meantime, renovations continue apace at the Field House. We've got some pictures.


This is the first picture we've seen of the new section with the lights on in the Field House. According to what we've found out about the project, the floor level will indeed contain some Let's Go Red space and a mini "Hall of Fame" type area. The second level will house men's hockey offices on one side, women's hockey offices on the other side, and in the middle will be a reception room for Dr. Jackson and her guests, high rollers, donors, recruits, etc.

There are plans for a third level, which may include additional press space, but this will not be included as part of this project at present.



The east side of the Field House is starting to look a little more familiar as the dashers have now been put up on that side, but it's still sans glass. There's still no stage - and there isn't going to be, apparently. The current plan is to put the Pep Band at the top of Section 13 on the north side of the Field House instead of on stage, and the eastern curtain will be moved closer to the glass. The goal is to create a more "intimate" feeling within the Field House, but we'll see just how well it works in a month's time. There are a number of issues for the band especially, having to arrange themselves in the stands.

The old scoreboard is right back up where it normally is. There's been some conflicting reports as to whether it is going to be replaced mid-season (along with the sound system) or whether the replacement will wait until the next offseason, but the components themselves should arrive before the end of the year.

The mid-season replacement may be what's going to happen - according to the site manager, the building will have ice and be habitable for sporting events by the time scheduled events begin again in three weeks, but the renovations themselves will not be completed until December.

With the Field House still lacking in ice, the captains have had to move their practices to Knickerbacker Arena in North Troy.



Here's John Kennedy (center, no helmet) giving the team a pep talk at the end of practice. Visible on the right in the goalie pads and black sweater without a helmet is Jeremy Coupal, the Engineers' new practice goaltender. He replaces Joe Harkenrider, who left the team to focus on his studies, as the 3rd goaltender.

Coupal, a junior Materials Engineering major, started eight games for the RPI club team last season, amassing a 2-6-0 record with a 4.22 GAA and .872 save percentage, with one shutout against Norwich. Before coming to RPI, Coupal was at one point was the starting goaltender at Seton Catholic High School in Plattsburgh. Former RPI practice goalie Jim Palmer, one of the most popular fan favorites in recent history, also attended Seton Catholic, as did former defenseman Glenn Coupal (who is likely related to Jeremy, but we won't know for sure until his RPI biography is released).

Speaking of the club team, the Engineers will have all 14 of their home games at Houston Field House this year, starting on September 24th at 7 p.m. when they host Union. The club team will also host Brown, Merrimack, Quinnipiac, Hudson Valley CC, Roger Williams, Keene State, Westfield State, UConn, Marist, NYU, Vermont, and Norwich this season.

The women are also hard at work at "The Knick." Below, the team takes a few shots on senior goaltender Sonja van der Bliek.



Finally, a quick video of the women taking a few shots.

Know Your Enemy: Brown

This week's profile touches on a program that is known for brief moments of glory surrounded by months and years of pain. While the program at Brown is among the oldest in the nation, their record of accolades is quite thin - but that doesn't mean they're a team to be overlooked, especially in this upcoming season, thanks to a two-week span last year in which they repeatedly defied expectations by sticking to their system.

Brown
Nickname: Bears
Location: Providence, RI
Founded: 1764
Conference: ECAC (Ivy League)
National Championships: 0
Last NCAA Appearance: 1993
Last Frozen Four: 1976
Coach: Brendan Whittet (2nd season)
2009-10 Record: 13-20-4 (6-12-4 ECAC, 11th place)
Series: RPI leads, 51-22-6
First Game: December 28, 1951 (Troy, NY)
Last RPI win: March 6, 2010 (Troy, NY)
Last Brown win: March 7, 2010 (Troy, NY)

2010-11 games: December 4, 2010 (Providence, RI); January 28, 2011 (Troy, NY)
Key players: F Harry Zolnierczyk, sr.; F Jesse Fratkin, sr.; F Jack Maclellan, jr.; F Chris Zaires, so.; F Garnet Hathaway, fr.; D Jeremy Russell, sr.; D Jeff Buvinow, jr.; D Richie Crowley, so.; G Mike Clemente, jr.

Key losses: F Aaron Volpatti, F Devin Timberlake, F Jordan Pietrus, D Sean McMonagle

We mentioned that Brown took part in the first game between schools that still play hockey when they took on Harvard in Boston on January 19, 1898 - the Bears dominated that contest, winning 6-0 in the first game for both programs. Brown would go undefeated against collegiate competition that season, beating Yale twice and earning a victory over Columbia as well. That might lend one to suspect that Brown could be considered one of the first dominant teams in the history of college hockey, but their success would not last much longer past their first season. The Bears would roughly break even in their 1899 and 1901 seasons, but from 1903 through 1906, Brown would compile a record of 2-22-0, with both wins (and two losses) coming against high school teams. After a 4-0 loss to Harvard on February 7, 1906, hockey at Brown would disappear for the next 20 years. They would return in 1927 and field some decent teams in the early 1930s, but at the end of the decade the Bears would return to hibernation for 8 more years.

The modern era of hockey at Brown began in 1947, coinciding with the opening of the NCAA era. The first season was rough as the Bears gave up 10 or more goals on four occasions (including twice against Harvard and once in a 10-4 loss to the University of California), but within four years, the Bears were ready to approach the pinnacle of the college hockey world. After putting together a 16-6-0 regular season in 1951, Brown earned their first NCAA tournament invitation. The Bears would take down the defending national champions and hosts, Colorado College, 8-4 in the semifinals before falling to Michigan, 7-1 in the national championship game.

Head coach Westcott Moulton left in 1952 after five seasons with Brown, and the Bears' fortunes went with him. For the remainder of the 1950s, the Bears were a .500 team at best, bottoming out in 1960-61 when they lost every single game they played, going 0-20-0 in the final season before joining the ECAC for its inaugural season, a move which coincided with the opening of Meehan Auditorium on campus as their new home. The new building helped contribute to a new high in short order, however, as the Bears built from that bottom to reach the NCAA tournament again in 1965, when Brown would go 23-5-0 in the regular season to win their first formal Ivy League title. The Bears' new building would host the Frozen Four, but the Bears lost twice, in the semifinals to the eventual national champions, Michigan Tech, and in the third-place game to North Dakota.

Much like their first NCAA appearance, it was another peak for Brown, and the team sloped back into hard times in the immediate aftermath, though the trough this time was not as deep, as the team generally maintained .500 records through the late 1960s and into the 1970s with a few excellent seasons sprinkled in. The team peaked again in 1976 as the Bears rode a 22-6-0 regular season record to their second Ivy League title and another NCAA appearance, where they faced the same that ended their national title hopes 11 years prior, Michigan Tech. Brown would lose a heartbreaking 7-6 game to the Huskies in two overtimes before rebounding to defeat Boston University to claim third place.

Once again, the NCAA tournament appearance came in advance of a decline, and this one was more similar in nature to the decline the team endured during the 1950s, only this time it was more severe and longer lasting - and to some extent, continues through to the present day with some minor exceptions. The Bears hovered around .500 through the remainder of the 1970s, but the 1980s were particularly brutal in Providence. From 1981 to 1991, the Bears endured 9 seasons in which they failed to reach the 10-win mark, and had 14 consecutive losing seasons between 1979 and 1992.

Dartmouth alum Bob Gaudet helped snap the team out of its funk for a few years in the early 1990s as head coach. Gaudet's first team in 1988-89 was brutal, as the Bears finished with a 1-25-0 record, but the team slowly began to improve. Brown won their third Ivy title in 1991 despite a 9-15-3 record overall, and by 1993, Gaudet had assembled a rough and tumble team that worked its way up to a 4th place finish before riding a solid run through the ECAC playoffs to the first ECAC championship game played in Lake Placid. The Bears dropped a 3-1 game to Clarkson, but still earned their 4th NCAA bid.

Once again, the NCAA tournament represented a peak, and after two more fair seasons, Brown was back to struggling. Gaudet departed for his alma mater in 1997, and Roger Grillo wasn't immediately able to stem the tide. The Bears spent most of the late 1990s in the ECAC cellar, failing to reach 10 wins five times from 1996 to 2001. Behind current NHL goaltender Yann Danis in the early 2000s, Brown was able to improve their fortunes to some extent, but never did better than 4 games over .500 in Danis' senior year of 2004. The Bears last recorded a winning season in 2005, and have had 12 losing seasons in the last 15 years.

When Grillo departed Brown in 2009 to take a job with USA Hockey, Brown alum Brendan Whittet took over. Whittet was part of the last Brown team to go to the NCAA tournament under Gaudet, and he immediately set about re-instituting the same type of rough, in-your-face hockey that made Brown successful when he was a player. Where the team lacked in talent, they made up for in intimidation. The majority of the season was difficult for the Bears, as they limped to an 11th place finish with the worst defense in the league by far - they allowed 11 more goals in ECAC play than any other team. The offense was not much better, and their special teams were far below average.

But the playoffs were a different story. In consecutive weeks, Brown defeated the 2nd best defense in the league in RPI and the top offense in the nation in Yale using hard hitting and a clutch and grab trap style to intimidate the opponent and slow the game down in order to make up for a defense that, all season, had been causing the team problems.

Brown brings back a decent amount of scoring, led by Zolnierczyk, who will captain the team for his senior season, but Fratkin and Maclellan have shown a knack for putting the puck in the net as well. Beefy freshman Garnet Hathaway should add to that ability. Although Volpatti graduated as the leading goalscorer, Brown's offense may well be improved over last season. But the defense remains the weak point for the Bears. Buvinow is an outstanding two-way defenseman, but he's only one man. Mike Clemente put up mediocre numbers in net as a freshman, but had absolutely horrid figures last year as a sophomore, which made it difficult for Brown to play their trap style, since the trap tends to inhibit offensive chances. To point, in each of Brown's five playoff victories (representing 38% of their victories for the entire season), the Bears never once relinquished the lead once they had it, and they never had the lead in their three playoff losses.

Intimidation is the other key point to Brown's game, and it should be for the forseeable future as well. Volpatti broke the school record for penalty minutes in a season last year, and the Bears recently landed a recruit whose most impressive statistic is his massive PIM number. If they can't keep up with you, Brown will absolutely try to make you think twice about what you're doing with the puck, or at least force you to make a quick decision lest you get bowled over and turn it over.

Obviously, the key with Brown is in grabbing the lead and focusing on overcoming their bruising style to gain some insurance goals to get them out of the game. The defense has to stay tight early - a team that gets behind is going to find the going tough around the edges of the ice, as the Engineers learned last season, especially in Game 3 where they fell behind early, and then allowed their frustration at the rough play and the inability to maneuver to get the better of them as Brown built a lead they could not conquer.