* July 1983: Five schools plan leave the ECAC to start Hockey East, RPI stays put
Michael Jackson - Beat It
The ECAC unified eastern college hockey under a single banner since its formation in the early 1960s, but it had always been a strange brew. The Ivy League, its own conference in every other sport, made up a healthy chunk of the group. The other teams based in the east of the region were typically Division I schools with a strong pedigree in hockey, while the other teams based in the west part of the region were mainly relics of a bygone era, when small schools and large schools were lumped into one, but their hockey histories made them equals.
The league has always been a precarious combination, and when concerns over the Ivy League's potential departure from the alliance, or their stringent academic requirements becoming paramount within the ECAC, it created a rift that ultimately led to the creation of one power conference and the slow decline of the former eastern power.
In July 1983, Boston College, Boston University, New Hampshire, Northeastern, and Providence decided upon a preemptive strike to protect their programs from an Ivy split. They announced the formation of a new conference, the Hockey East Association. Maine, the lone holdout from the ECAC's Eastern Division joined in soon thereafter, along with Division II power UMass-Lowell, giving the nascent conference seven members. There were certainly room for more.
The Division III schools of the ECAC, RPI, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence, were invited to become a part of the new grouping in part thanks to their strong hockey reputations. Clarkson was the program with the highest winning percentage in college hockey history, St. Lawrence a traditionally strong program, and RPI was on the rise to what would eventually become a national championship.
The remaining schools had a conundrum. Would they abandon the Ivy League ties, with its prestigious links to outstanding education, or would they pass up the opportunity to join what was sure to be one of the new power conferences of college hockey? Ultimately, all three schools chose to maintain their connection to the ECAC, and when the Ivy League elected to remain in the ECAC, a new 12-team conference was born, minus many of its top tier programs.
RPI was offered another opportunity to join Hockey East in the 1990s, but the school again turned down the invitation, citing a satisfaction with their position in the ECAC given that the program was among the league's top teams at the time. Recent flirtations between RPI and Hockey East went nowhere after UConn chose to improve their program with scholarships and a new arena in order to become the league's 12th team.
So the Engineers have had more than their fair share of opportunities to join Hockey East - besides the usual suspects of UConn and the University of Rhode Island (as the only prominent state schools in New England not currently in the conference), the Engineers may be the program most frequently linked with Hockey East accession. With the latest development of the Huskies joining the conference, it seems to be a road now closed to RPI, at least until the next conference upheaval, if and when it happens.
But what if RPI had done what BC and BU did in 1983, and freaked out at the possibility of the Ivies striking out on their own - a scenario which continues to pop up in rumors from time to time? What if they'd chosen to accept the invitation?
Hockey East's first season was also the season RPI won the national championship, the 1984-85 campaign. Given that Hockey East played an intriguing interlocking schedule with the WCHA that season (in which games were scheduled between the conferences, to count in each conference's standings), it's likely the Engineers would have played a much more difficult regular-season schedule than they actually did. While they could have certainly finished atop the new conference, it would not have been as easy as it was in the ECAC.
RPI certainly would not have faced Providence in the national championship if they had left, as Providence was a Cinderella team in the NCAA tournament. Had the Engineers duplicated their feat of winning the ECAC regular season and tournament in the new conference, the Friars would likely have been stuck at home. That could have jumbled the entire tournament up, and seen RPI facing the likes of Minnesota-Duluth, Boston College, or Michigan State in the finals instead - the latter of which would have been a tough draw in Detroit for sure. It's hard to say exactly what would have happened - perhaps Providence's Cinderella run would have derailed RPI completely.
Further out, though, the Engineers' prospects in Hockey East as charter members are likely closer to that of the Friars than to the power quartet that has traded the regular season crown since the conference's creation. The ECAC, for all of its problems, has been a conference with a great deal of parity from year to year, but in Hockey East, it's all about the Big Four, and the rest have traditionally fought for the scraps. NCAA bids for teams outside the Big Four have been few and far between - Providence in 1985, 1989, 1991, 1996, and 2001; Northeastern in 1988, 1994, and 2009; Lowell in 1988, 1994, 1996, and 2011; UMass in 2007, Vermont in 2009 and 2010, and Merrimack in 2011. That's just 16 bids over 28 years, compared with 19 for Boston College alone and 72 between all of the Big Four schools.
RPI has as many NCAA tournament appearances (four - 1985, 1994, 1995, 2011) as any non-Big Four Hockey East school with the exception of Providence during Hockey East's existence (Vermont too, if you count their three trips while they were in the ECAC). It has been argued that RPI's recruiting would improve if it were in Hockey East, but would it improve enough for them to be able to compete more frequently than Providence does? It's tough to make that assertion.
The major difference would be in October every year - RPI would be playing league games in its first month if it were in Hockey East today, and although its chances at competing for hardware would be diminished, they probably would be able to draw better non-conference opponents to play at Houston Field House as a Hockey East member, and by extension it's likely that the RPI Holiday Tournament would still exist. Non-conference games with Union, Clarkson, and St. Lawrence would be commonplace. Yearly home contests with the major schools of Hockey East would likely raise the local profile of the program.
All in all, many of the difference are things we discussed last year when the possibility of becoming the 12th team in Hockey East was thrown around. The move could have had murky effects on the 1985 championship, but all told it's hard to say for sure it would have been a net positive experience for the program. If any existed, it would likely be only incremental.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Monday, December 17, 2012
What If: Money in the Bank
Late 1970s: Scholarships come to RPI
The Knack - My Sharona
The program survived the turbulent 1960s, and once the 1970s began, the Engineers were back to being regularly competitive within the ECAC. Leon Abbott took over for Garry Kearns in 1969, leaving after three years with a winning record. Jim Salfi became RPI's fifth head coach of the modern era after Abbott's departure, moving to Troy from the University of Pennsylvania, which was the Ivy League's seventh program at the time.
Competitiveness was a relative thing in the 1970s, and it started slowly - the Engineers qualified for the ECAC Tournament in 1971, 1972, and 1973, but were blown out each time in the one-game quarterfinals. In 1974, they broke through with an overtime win over a UNH team considered the best in the nation (keeping the Wildcats out of the NCAA tournament in the process), but were humbled by Harvard and Cornell in the semifinals and consolation games. 1977 and 1978 brought more tournament qualifications, but no breakthroughs, not even at home against eventual league champions Boston College in 1978, the Engineers' first ever home game in the tournament (a 7-6 overtime loss).
For a side that wasn't among the beasts of the east in the 1970s, six tournament appearances in eight years was no slight feat. Only eight teams made the tournament back then, and the league was comprised of 17 programs for much of the decade. But the Engineers were surely facing a bit of a ceiling that they just couldn't break through. They couldn't get past the BUs, BCs, Cornells, and Harvards of the league, and although they'd put a serious gap between much of the rest of the league, they weren't looking likely to breach the top tier any time soon.
Looking back, it's fairly impressive that RPI was able to do what it did without having the Ivy League pedigree of Cornell and Harvard, or the big school/scholarship allure of most of the teams that eventually formed Hockey East. RPI had a solid educational background, but without the fanfare that came with being Harvard. The only thing to do was pretty obvious - athletic scholarships.
The concept of athletic scholarships had been around since 1950, but it wasn't until 1973, when the NCAA developed clear guidelines for scholarships (and the three divisions) that they became a strategic element. RPI was (and still is) a Division III school - one that did not offer athletic scholarships at all, but the hockey program was certainly incongruous with the rest of the athletic department.
The debate over athletic scholarships was simple - the Division III mentality saw them as a watering down of the educational foundation of the school, by and large, and the question at RPI was really one of philosophy over expediency.
By the time Holy Cross coach Mike Addesa arrived in Troy in 1979, the argument was pointed. Addesa looked at the situation, and made his case to the administration - the program needed scholarships to compete, and they needed them immediately. Now 25 years removed from the national championship that had placed the school on the map, the school could not draw the top Canadian talent that was flocking to Clarkson and St. Lawrence thanks to proximity, could not draw the talent that flocked to the Ivy League pedigree, and couldn't hope to compete with BC or BU on equal grounds without being able to offer financial incentive.
Addesa clashed with administration on this issue until he finally got his way. He made enemies in the process, which would lead to his downfall a decade later, but in time for the 1981-82 season, the first set of scholarship athletes arrived in Troy. They didn't know it right away, but these would become names etched in RPI history. Tim Friday. Ken Hammond. Mike Sadeghpour. Pierre Langevin. All four would eventually skate for and win RPI's second national championship in their final game in the Cherry and White.
The second scholarship class was even bigger. George Servinis. Kraig Nienhuis. Mike Dark. Mark Jooris. John Carter. And, of course, Adam Oates. An NHL-caliber goaltender in Daren Puppa arrived in 1983, and the rest is history.
The speed with which Addesa brought RPI from the middle of the ECAC to the top of the nation with the mere addition of athletic scholarships is a testament to his abilities as both a recruiter and a coach. When Adam Oates was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, he singled out Mike Addesa by name for what he'd done for his career in bringing him to Troy.
This "what if" scenario is a bit of a two-fer. What if RPI had failed to institute athletic scholarships in the early 1980s, and alternatively, what if Adam Oates had never come to RPI? The latter would have been a possibility had Oates been drafted by the Ontario Hockey League, but the confluence of scholarships and a lack of interest from major junior set into motion events that would lead to RPI's second national championship.
There is little argument that the team Addesa assembled to become one of the greatest college teams in the history of the sport would never have come together without the incentive of athletic scholarships, but the addition of Oates to the lineup in 1982 was just as vital. It helped attract additional key pieces to the Engineers for their monster seasons in 1984 and 1985.
Without scholarships, RPI likely maintains the trajectory they were on in the 1970s, and after the Hockey East split, would have probably put together a path similar to that of Dartmouth in the late 1980s and 1990s, perhaps a touch better - in the lower half of the 12-team league most years, occasionally reaching the middle of the conference but never more than that. If resistance to scholarships had continued through 2003, when the NCAA grandfathered Division III schools offering them in their Division I sports, by the time the present day rolled around, there would surely have been discussions whether moving to Atlantic Hockey, with its restrictions on scholarships, would be in the program's best interest. In all likelihood, the program would probably be more similar to that of RIT today.
If the school had instead offered scholarships later down the road, the effect probably would not have propelled them to the heights they reached during the mid-1980s - Colgate and St. Lawrence, when they began offering scholarships, did not suddenly become world beaters. The timing had to work out just perfectly for the Engineers in the early 1980s, and historically, it was the right move at the right time in order to get the right players.
The Knack - My Sharona
The program survived the turbulent 1960s, and once the 1970s began, the Engineers were back to being regularly competitive within the ECAC. Leon Abbott took over for Garry Kearns in 1969, leaving after three years with a winning record. Jim Salfi became RPI's fifth head coach of the modern era after Abbott's departure, moving to Troy from the University of Pennsylvania, which was the Ivy League's seventh program at the time.
Competitiveness was a relative thing in the 1970s, and it started slowly - the Engineers qualified for the ECAC Tournament in 1971, 1972, and 1973, but were blown out each time in the one-game quarterfinals. In 1974, they broke through with an overtime win over a UNH team considered the best in the nation (keeping the Wildcats out of the NCAA tournament in the process), but were humbled by Harvard and Cornell in the semifinals and consolation games. 1977 and 1978 brought more tournament qualifications, but no breakthroughs, not even at home against eventual league champions Boston College in 1978, the Engineers' first ever home game in the tournament (a 7-6 overtime loss).
For a side that wasn't among the beasts of the east in the 1970s, six tournament appearances in eight years was no slight feat. Only eight teams made the tournament back then, and the league was comprised of 17 programs for much of the decade. But the Engineers were surely facing a bit of a ceiling that they just couldn't break through. They couldn't get past the BUs, BCs, Cornells, and Harvards of the league, and although they'd put a serious gap between much of the rest of the league, they weren't looking likely to breach the top tier any time soon.
Looking back, it's fairly impressive that RPI was able to do what it did without having the Ivy League pedigree of Cornell and Harvard, or the big school/scholarship allure of most of the teams that eventually formed Hockey East. RPI had a solid educational background, but without the fanfare that came with being Harvard. The only thing to do was pretty obvious - athletic scholarships.
The concept of athletic scholarships had been around since 1950, but it wasn't until 1973, when the NCAA developed clear guidelines for scholarships (and the three divisions) that they became a strategic element. RPI was (and still is) a Division III school - one that did not offer athletic scholarships at all, but the hockey program was certainly incongruous with the rest of the athletic department.
The debate over athletic scholarships was simple - the Division III mentality saw them as a watering down of the educational foundation of the school, by and large, and the question at RPI was really one of philosophy over expediency.
By the time Holy Cross coach Mike Addesa arrived in Troy in 1979, the argument was pointed. Addesa looked at the situation, and made his case to the administration - the program needed scholarships to compete, and they needed them immediately. Now 25 years removed from the national championship that had placed the school on the map, the school could not draw the top Canadian talent that was flocking to Clarkson and St. Lawrence thanks to proximity, could not draw the talent that flocked to the Ivy League pedigree, and couldn't hope to compete with BC or BU on equal grounds without being able to offer financial incentive.
Addesa clashed with administration on this issue until he finally got his way. He made enemies in the process, which would lead to his downfall a decade later, but in time for the 1981-82 season, the first set of scholarship athletes arrived in Troy. They didn't know it right away, but these would become names etched in RPI history. Tim Friday. Ken Hammond. Mike Sadeghpour. Pierre Langevin. All four would eventually skate for and win RPI's second national championship in their final game in the Cherry and White.
The second scholarship class was even bigger. George Servinis. Kraig Nienhuis. Mike Dark. Mark Jooris. John Carter. And, of course, Adam Oates. An NHL-caliber goaltender in Daren Puppa arrived in 1983, and the rest is history.
The speed with which Addesa brought RPI from the middle of the ECAC to the top of the nation with the mere addition of athletic scholarships is a testament to his abilities as both a recruiter and a coach. When Adam Oates was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, he singled out Mike Addesa by name for what he'd done for his career in bringing him to Troy.
This "what if" scenario is a bit of a two-fer. What if RPI had failed to institute athletic scholarships in the early 1980s, and alternatively, what if Adam Oates had never come to RPI? The latter would have been a possibility had Oates been drafted by the Ontario Hockey League, but the confluence of scholarships and a lack of interest from major junior set into motion events that would lead to RPI's second national championship.
There is little argument that the team Addesa assembled to become one of the greatest college teams in the history of the sport would never have come together without the incentive of athletic scholarships, but the addition of Oates to the lineup in 1982 was just as vital. It helped attract additional key pieces to the Engineers for their monster seasons in 1984 and 1985.
Without scholarships, RPI likely maintains the trajectory they were on in the 1970s, and after the Hockey East split, would have probably put together a path similar to that of Dartmouth in the late 1980s and 1990s, perhaps a touch better - in the lower half of the 12-team league most years, occasionally reaching the middle of the conference but never more than that. If resistance to scholarships had continued through 2003, when the NCAA grandfathered Division III schools offering them in their Division I sports, by the time the present day rolled around, there would surely have been discussions whether moving to Atlantic Hockey, with its restrictions on scholarships, would be in the program's best interest. In all likelihood, the program would probably be more similar to that of RIT today.
If the school had instead offered scholarships later down the road, the effect probably would not have propelled them to the heights they reached during the mid-1980s - Colgate and St. Lawrence, when they began offering scholarships, did not suddenly become world beaters. The timing had to work out just perfectly for the Engineers in the early 1980s, and historically, it was the right move at the right time in order to get the right players.
Friday, December 14, 2012
What If: Another Day at the Office
December 1968: Doug Hearns scores an overtime goal to defeat Ken Dryden and Cornell
The Beatles - Hey Jude
By the time the 1968-69 season rolled around, the worst of the most troubled period in RPI's hockey history was coming to an end. The dreadful 1966 and 1967 campaigns were fully in the rear-view, and in the 1967-68 season, the Engineers began their road back to respectability. It was painfully obvious that they weren't quite where they needed to be to be competitive yet, given four losses to Clarkson and St. Lawrence, plus an 8-1 pasting by Ned Harkness and the reigning national champions from Cornell, but after two years with just one ECAC win, RPI was certainly ready to take an 11-11-0 overall record.
That wasn't quite enough to end the discussion on whether the team should remain in what was then termed the "University Division" of the NCAA in hockey, however. The pedigree that came with having been a national champion pulled the program toward staying, but the nature of the remainder of the school's athletic offerings coupled with the barely concluded doldrums the team had recently experienced pulled away.
The 1968-69 season kicked off with a road trip to Amherst, MA to square off with American International, an ECAC-II level team that was local enough to have appeared on the RPI schedule in every season dating back to 1956. The Yellow Jackets, much like today, were a traditional punching bag for pretty much everyone. From 1956 to 1965, the Engineers beat AIC by at least five goals - and usually more, frequently by double digits - in every single season. The 1966 team, however, had been so bad that they had lost to AIC by five goals, still the only time the Engineers have ever lost to the Yellow Jackets.
The winning ways returned the following season with a closer than usual three-goal edge in 1967, and had gotten back in the normal swing of things with a 7-0 win in February of 1968. This time, RPI picked up another win, but it was close by the measure of previous seasons, just a 5-1 edge.
Waiting for them in the home opener just four days later were the Cornell Big Red. Harkness had done with Cornell pretty much what he'd done at RPI, and just as quickly. In 1963, Cornell had a long, but relatively undistinguished history on the ice. That changed immediately once Harkness came to Ithaca, and by his fourth season behind the bench in 1967, the Big Red were enjoying a 27-1-1 season, their first ECAC title, and their first national championship.
1968 was almost as good for the Big Red. They returned to the Frozen Four with a 26-1-0 record, but were upset by North Dakota in the first round, having to settle for third place and a still astounding 27-2-0 record. Needless to say, with a record of 54-3-1 in the preceding two seasons, Cornell coming to RPI was supposed to be pretty much a walk in the park.
The Engineers hadn't had much luck against Cornell with their old bench boss leading things, naturally. Although Rube Bjorkman's Engineers won an 8-0 game in Ithaca the first time RPI played against Harkness' squad, the Engineers had lost five straight to the Big Red, including 7-2 and 8-1 showings during Cornell's previous two monster years. With senior Ken Dryden and four other All-Americans on the team, one could be forgiven for thinking RPI's second game of the season was a hopeless encounter.
As it turned out, the Engineers were able to keep it close for much of the contest as the Big Red appeared to be experiencing a bit of an off night. Even so, the visitors were able to maintain a 3-2 lead late. With time growing short, senior Dale Watson managed to put one past Dryden to give the Engineers an improbable tie against the supposedly unbeatable Big Red.
Now, in today's game, this game would have ended as a 3-3 tie, because it wasn't until 6:09 of overtime that Doug Hearns took the most memorable shot since Gordie Peterkin, beating Dryden low to give the home team an impossible 4-3 victory. It was RPI's very own Miracle on Ice, just over 11 years before the real thing.
Ken Dryden made 81 starts in net for Cornell during his incredible collegiate career (which fed into a Hall of Fame NHL career that included six Stanley Cups). He won 76 times and tied once. Two of those four losses came in the NCAA tournament... but one of those extremely rare losses took place in Troy at a sleepy little school that had been a laughing stock on the ice for several years. After that, people weren't laughing much anymore - and in the afterglow, few were talking about RPI's need to play with schools their own size.
Given how heavily favored the Big Red were in this game, just getting them to overtime would have been considered a moral victory by itself - but say Cornell had won, or had waltzed through as they were supposed to? Are we psyching ourselves up for a weekend against Middlebury and Williams today?
Probably not. Although Hearns' goal is most frequently pointed to as the moment the program was saved - and it may well have been the moment the doubters disappeared - one has to consider what the Engineers were able to put together for the remainder of the season and into the 1970s before presuming that the program was bound for lesser competition without the David-slays-Goliath victory.
Three days after the big win, the Engineers came back to earth with a 7-3 loss against Clarkson, a team they hadn't beaten since well before Harkness left Troy dating back to 1961. A week later, a 5-4 loss at Northeastern left RPI 1-2 in the ECAC. But things would turn around later in the season. In mid-January, RPI put up a shocking 7-0 victory over Boston University, one of the league's better teams.
Then on February 14th, RPI achieved the unthinkable - they went to Potsdam and beat Clarkson, 5-4, the first time the Engineers had taken down the Golden Knights in almost a decade. The following night, the team skated to a 5-5 tie with St. Lawrence in a game, legend tells it, that was supremely biased against RPI, as the Engineers had been heavily (and apparently unjustifiably) penalized, leading to four power play goals for the Larries.
Returning home, RPI put up an 8-5 win over Boston College, which led John "Snooks" Kelley to declare that RPI had "played the best game of any team [they'd] played all season." (And they'd already played Cornell.) A win over ECAC-II team Merrimack and a 5-2 victory over St. Lawrence (on apparently more equitable terms) followed, helping RPI qualify for the ECAC playoffs. Boston University drew their revenge in the one-game playoff, winning in Boston 4-2, but by the season's end, the Engineers were playing such good hockey that the only question on anyone's mind was how well the team would perform in the 1970s.
The BU game was Garry Kearns' final contest behind the RPI bench, but in many ways, it represented what he accomplished - he put the Engineers back in contention. The next season, under new coach Leon Abbott, was not one to write home about, but the 1970-71 Engineers started their season 9-0-1, and by then the question had been completely put to rest.
The win a Cornell team that counts as one of the greatest in the history of college hockey cannot be diminished. Perhaps without it, the Engineers would not have had the belief in themselves necessary to claw their way to the huge victories they put up late in the season. At the end of the day, RPI proved themselves more than just a one-hit wonder that season. Watson and Hearns set the table, but Garry Kearns and his charges already had what it took to have a successful season, and save a program's legacy. It's likely that even without Hearns' memorable goal (or the one from Watson that helped it happen), we'd still have Division I hockey at RPI.
The Beatles - Hey Jude
By the time the 1968-69 season rolled around, the worst of the most troubled period in RPI's hockey history was coming to an end. The dreadful 1966 and 1967 campaigns were fully in the rear-view, and in the 1967-68 season, the Engineers began their road back to respectability. It was painfully obvious that they weren't quite where they needed to be to be competitive yet, given four losses to Clarkson and St. Lawrence, plus an 8-1 pasting by Ned Harkness and the reigning national champions from Cornell, but after two years with just one ECAC win, RPI was certainly ready to take an 11-11-0 overall record.
That wasn't quite enough to end the discussion on whether the team should remain in what was then termed the "University Division" of the NCAA in hockey, however. The pedigree that came with having been a national champion pulled the program toward staying, but the nature of the remainder of the school's athletic offerings coupled with the barely concluded doldrums the team had recently experienced pulled away.
The 1968-69 season kicked off with a road trip to Amherst, MA to square off with American International, an ECAC-II level team that was local enough to have appeared on the RPI schedule in every season dating back to 1956. The Yellow Jackets, much like today, were a traditional punching bag for pretty much everyone. From 1956 to 1965, the Engineers beat AIC by at least five goals - and usually more, frequently by double digits - in every single season. The 1966 team, however, had been so bad that they had lost to AIC by five goals, still the only time the Engineers have ever lost to the Yellow Jackets.
The winning ways returned the following season with a closer than usual three-goal edge in 1967, and had gotten back in the normal swing of things with a 7-0 win in February of 1968. This time, RPI picked up another win, but it was close by the measure of previous seasons, just a 5-1 edge.
Waiting for them in the home opener just four days later were the Cornell Big Red. Harkness had done with Cornell pretty much what he'd done at RPI, and just as quickly. In 1963, Cornell had a long, but relatively undistinguished history on the ice. That changed immediately once Harkness came to Ithaca, and by his fourth season behind the bench in 1967, the Big Red were enjoying a 27-1-1 season, their first ECAC title, and their first national championship.
1968 was almost as good for the Big Red. They returned to the Frozen Four with a 26-1-0 record, but were upset by North Dakota in the first round, having to settle for third place and a still astounding 27-2-0 record. Needless to say, with a record of 54-3-1 in the preceding two seasons, Cornell coming to RPI was supposed to be pretty much a walk in the park.
The Engineers hadn't had much luck against Cornell with their old bench boss leading things, naturally. Although Rube Bjorkman's Engineers won an 8-0 game in Ithaca the first time RPI played against Harkness' squad, the Engineers had lost five straight to the Big Red, including 7-2 and 8-1 showings during Cornell's previous two monster years. With senior Ken Dryden and four other All-Americans on the team, one could be forgiven for thinking RPI's second game of the season was a hopeless encounter.
As it turned out, the Engineers were able to keep it close for much of the contest as the Big Red appeared to be experiencing a bit of an off night. Even so, the visitors were able to maintain a 3-2 lead late. With time growing short, senior Dale Watson managed to put one past Dryden to give the Engineers an improbable tie against the supposedly unbeatable Big Red.
Now, in today's game, this game would have ended as a 3-3 tie, because it wasn't until 6:09 of overtime that Doug Hearns took the most memorable shot since Gordie Peterkin, beating Dryden low to give the home team an impossible 4-3 victory. It was RPI's very own Miracle on Ice, just over 11 years before the real thing.
Ken Dryden made 81 starts in net for Cornell during his incredible collegiate career (which fed into a Hall of Fame NHL career that included six Stanley Cups). He won 76 times and tied once. Two of those four losses came in the NCAA tournament... but one of those extremely rare losses took place in Troy at a sleepy little school that had been a laughing stock on the ice for several years. After that, people weren't laughing much anymore - and in the afterglow, few were talking about RPI's need to play with schools their own size.
Given how heavily favored the Big Red were in this game, just getting them to overtime would have been considered a moral victory by itself - but say Cornell had won, or had waltzed through as they were supposed to? Are we psyching ourselves up for a weekend against Middlebury and Williams today?
Probably not. Although Hearns' goal is most frequently pointed to as the moment the program was saved - and it may well have been the moment the doubters disappeared - one has to consider what the Engineers were able to put together for the remainder of the season and into the 1970s before presuming that the program was bound for lesser competition without the David-slays-Goliath victory.
Three days after the big win, the Engineers came back to earth with a 7-3 loss against Clarkson, a team they hadn't beaten since well before Harkness left Troy dating back to 1961. A week later, a 5-4 loss at Northeastern left RPI 1-2 in the ECAC. But things would turn around later in the season. In mid-January, RPI put up a shocking 7-0 victory over Boston University, one of the league's better teams.
Then on February 14th, RPI achieved the unthinkable - they went to Potsdam and beat Clarkson, 5-4, the first time the Engineers had taken down the Golden Knights in almost a decade. The following night, the team skated to a 5-5 tie with St. Lawrence in a game, legend tells it, that was supremely biased against RPI, as the Engineers had been heavily (and apparently unjustifiably) penalized, leading to four power play goals for the Larries.
Returning home, RPI put up an 8-5 win over Boston College, which led John "Snooks" Kelley to declare that RPI had "played the best game of any team [they'd] played all season." (And they'd already played Cornell.) A win over ECAC-II team Merrimack and a 5-2 victory over St. Lawrence (on apparently more equitable terms) followed, helping RPI qualify for the ECAC playoffs. Boston University drew their revenge in the one-game playoff, winning in Boston 4-2, but by the season's end, the Engineers were playing such good hockey that the only question on anyone's mind was how well the team would perform in the 1970s.
The BU game was Garry Kearns' final contest behind the RPI bench, but in many ways, it represented what he accomplished - he put the Engineers back in contention. The next season, under new coach Leon Abbott, was not one to write home about, but the 1970-71 Engineers started their season 9-0-1, and by then the question had been completely put to rest.
The win a Cornell team that counts as one of the greatest in the history of college hockey cannot be diminished. Perhaps without it, the Engineers would not have had the belief in themselves necessary to claw their way to the huge victories they put up late in the season. At the end of the day, RPI proved themselves more than just a one-hit wonder that season. Watson and Hearns set the table, but Garry Kearns and his charges already had what it took to have a successful season, and save a program's legacy. It's likely that even without Hearns' memorable goal (or the one from Watson that helped it happen), we'd still have Division I hockey at RPI.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
What If: Bjorkman's Conundrum
Summer 1964: Rube Bjorkman leaves RPI abruptly for New Hampshire
The Animals - House of the Rising Sun
Long-time Engineer fans, and those newer ones familiar with the history of the program, know that the mid-to-late 1960s were among some of the worst of times for RPI hockey. Many attribute the struggles of that time period to Ned Harkness' immediate replacement behind the bench - Minnesota native Rube Bjorkman, who would eventually go on to be awarded the Kelley Founders Award by the American Hockey Coaches Association for his contributions to the growth and development of hockey in the United States. Bjorkman's single season at RPI was his first as a college coach and produced the best post-season results of his eventual 15-year college hockey coaching career, but his tenure also nearly ruined hockey at RPI.
Rubin "Rube" Bjorkman arrived at RPI in 1963 after Harkness left Troy to take the reins at then-unfancied Cornell. He was a distinguished replacement for the man who was essentially the modern founder of RPI hockey, arriving with an exceptional resume. A hero in his hometown Roseau, MN where he helped the school win its first state championship in 1946 (the small town in the state's extreme north is still known for outstanding high school hockey), Bjorkman graduated from Minnesota in 1951 as one of the squad's top stars of the NCAA tournament era. While still at Minnesota, he played on the US Olympic team at the St. Moritz Olympics in 1948 and just after graduation was a key member of the silver medal team at Oslo in 1952.
He began coaching ten years later, at Greenway High School in Coleraine, MN. In his first season behind the bench, Greenway reached the Minnesota state tournament for the first time. A year later, he was on his way east to become the second coach in RPI Hockey's modern era.
The team Bjorkman inherited in Troy was a talented one. It featured senior Bob Brinkworth, the reigning ECAC player of the year who had also been ECAC rookie of the year in 1962, and junior Jerry Knightley, who, like Brinkworth, had little problem scoring at will.
In those days, the ECAC had been a very informal collection of eastern teams and little more than an invitational tournament at the end of the season that would help determine which two teams would earn the eastern bids to the NCAA tournament. As such, the 29 teams that made up the conference played wildly varying "conference" schedules (as many as 25 games by New Hampshire and as few as 8 by UConn and Vermont). RPI under Bjorkman finished with a respectable 12-6-0 record in the league, which earned them an invite to the ECAC tournament.
After defeating Boston College in Chestnut Hill to advance to the semifinals, RPI was knocked off by a cinderella team from St. Lawrence, 3-1, but the Engineers bounced back to a surprising 7-2 victory in the consolation game over a Clarkson team that had beaten them twice before earlier in the season, including a 13-4 whitewash in Potsdam. That win over Clarkson earned RPI a ticket to their fourth-ever NCAA tournament apperance.
The 1964 tournament took place in Denver at the University of Denver Arena, and as fate would have it the Engineers were drawn against the homestanding Denver Pioneers, falling 4-1 to end RPI's national championship hopes. The Engineers drew a respectable 2-1 victory over the ECAC's regular season and tournament champions, Providence, so they were able to end the season with a legitimate claim as one of the best teams in the east. Knightley's return, along with that of junior goaltender Bill Sack, should have pegged the Engineers as a team to watch in 1965.
Instead, Bjorkman left RPI late in the summer following the season after the sudden death of New Hampshire coach "Whoop" Snively. Suddenly needing a coach, RPI alum Garry Kearns, who had stayed in the Troy area after graduation, took over the program, and soon found a listless organization.
The reasons Bjorkman left the cupboard bare at RPI have not been well established, but all signs have pointed to problems with recruiting. Some recruits who had committed to RPI during Harkness' final season appear to have not ended up matriculating, leaving a weak class of incoming sophomores (in those days, freshmen were ineligible for varsity play). That was an immediate problem for Kearns' first season, which was middling thanks to the presence of Knightley and Sack.
Longer term, Bjorkman had his own recruiting failures that would haunt the program. It has been said that, coming from Minnesota, he had lacked the connections Harkness had in Ontario, which had been the school's most rich recruiting grounds. Also, of the recruits Bjorkman had been able to attract to RPI, few or none were able to withstand the school's difficult entry requirements. The combination of geographic and academic difficulties were apparently more than Bjorkman was prepared to handle, and the change of venue to Durham likely helped his own career immensely.
Meanwhile, back at RPI, Kearns was forced to throw teams together as best he could. The 1966 team, which suffered the most from Bjorkman's inability to draw quality recruits, won only three games, none in the ECAC, and most of the losses were by lopsided margins. The following season was little better in league play, as RPI skated to a 1-14 record in the ECAC, with a one-goal win over Army the only bright spot in league play, and a tie at home against Michigan the high point of the year.
Things got bad enough that fans started to leave in droves, and the school began to seriously ponder whether staying in the top level of the ECAC was truly in the best interest of the program. Ultimately, Kearns guided the program through the shallows, and by the time he left in 1969, the program was off life support and ready to continue in Division I.
The question of what would have become of the program had Snively not had a heart attack in the summer of 1964, opening the door for Bjorkman to leave RPI in the breach, is difficult to answer. Obviously, if Bjorkman had still been behind the bench in 1965, his recruiting problems would have been his own, and it's difficult to know how he would have dealt with them. The only real way to do this is to look at his career as a coach.
The Wildcats improved every season during Bjorkman's four-year tenure in Durham, but UNH was still playing outdoors in the mid-1960s, which basically killed any chance they had of winning championships. His last two years were the first in UNH's new rink, and both seasons were winning ones. Then in 1968, Bjorkman returned to western hockey, taking the helm at North Dakota. The Fighting Sioux had just come off a loss in the national championship game when he arrived, they would not return to that height until 1979 - the year after he left. In 10 years in Grand Forks, he compiled a record above .500 just twice. He is the only North Dakota coach since 1957 that never took the team to the Frozen Four.
Suffice to say, Bjorkman's legacy behind the bench, with the exception of the Kelley Award, was somewhat less than stellar - and in light of his recruiting struggles at RPI and subsequent difficulties coaching at a school that was already a traditional western power, it might be safe to say that the Institute didn't quite make the right call when it came to replacing Ned Harkness.
So, what if he'd stayed? Perhaps he could have managed, eventually, to find the right student-athletes from the right places with the right heads on their shoulders, but would he have been able to duplicate the relative success of that one season behind the bench? The evidence suggests that he probably wouldn't have been able to do that at RPI if he couldn't manage it at North Dakota. If Bjorkman had stuck around, the decline of the late 1960s probably still would have taken place, and it would have taken place without the grit and determination of an alum at the helm in Garry Kearns.
For better or for worse, the guidance that Kearns provided during his tenure as coach helped save the program - and secured for him a much deserved spot in the RPI Hockey Ring of Honor for his contributions as both a player and a coach. As good as Bjorkman's one season was - led, remember, by two RPI legends recruited by Harkness - there's not much doubt that further seasons would be unlikely to have materialized. Looking back today, Bjorkman's abrupt departure, which allowed the school to make a good decision in place of a bad one, may have helped save the program from being moved to what is today Division III.
The Animals - House of the Rising Sun
Long-time Engineer fans, and those newer ones familiar with the history of the program, know that the mid-to-late 1960s were among some of the worst of times for RPI hockey. Many attribute the struggles of that time period to Ned Harkness' immediate replacement behind the bench - Minnesota native Rube Bjorkman, who would eventually go on to be awarded the Kelley Founders Award by the American Hockey Coaches Association for his contributions to the growth and development of hockey in the United States. Bjorkman's single season at RPI was his first as a college coach and produced the best post-season results of his eventual 15-year college hockey coaching career, but his tenure also nearly ruined hockey at RPI.
Rubin "Rube" Bjorkman arrived at RPI in 1963 after Harkness left Troy to take the reins at then-unfancied Cornell. He was a distinguished replacement for the man who was essentially the modern founder of RPI hockey, arriving with an exceptional resume. A hero in his hometown Roseau, MN where he helped the school win its first state championship in 1946 (the small town in the state's extreme north is still known for outstanding high school hockey), Bjorkman graduated from Minnesota in 1951 as one of the squad's top stars of the NCAA tournament era. While still at Minnesota, he played on the US Olympic team at the St. Moritz Olympics in 1948 and just after graduation was a key member of the silver medal team at Oslo in 1952.
He began coaching ten years later, at Greenway High School in Coleraine, MN. In his first season behind the bench, Greenway reached the Minnesota state tournament for the first time. A year later, he was on his way east to become the second coach in RPI Hockey's modern era.
The team Bjorkman inherited in Troy was a talented one. It featured senior Bob Brinkworth, the reigning ECAC player of the year who had also been ECAC rookie of the year in 1962, and junior Jerry Knightley, who, like Brinkworth, had little problem scoring at will.
In those days, the ECAC had been a very informal collection of eastern teams and little more than an invitational tournament at the end of the season that would help determine which two teams would earn the eastern bids to the NCAA tournament. As such, the 29 teams that made up the conference played wildly varying "conference" schedules (as many as 25 games by New Hampshire and as few as 8 by UConn and Vermont). RPI under Bjorkman finished with a respectable 12-6-0 record in the league, which earned them an invite to the ECAC tournament.
After defeating Boston College in Chestnut Hill to advance to the semifinals, RPI was knocked off by a cinderella team from St. Lawrence, 3-1, but the Engineers bounced back to a surprising 7-2 victory in the consolation game over a Clarkson team that had beaten them twice before earlier in the season, including a 13-4 whitewash in Potsdam. That win over Clarkson earned RPI a ticket to their fourth-ever NCAA tournament apperance.
The 1964 tournament took place in Denver at the University of Denver Arena, and as fate would have it the Engineers were drawn against the homestanding Denver Pioneers, falling 4-1 to end RPI's national championship hopes. The Engineers drew a respectable 2-1 victory over the ECAC's regular season and tournament champions, Providence, so they were able to end the season with a legitimate claim as one of the best teams in the east. Knightley's return, along with that of junior goaltender Bill Sack, should have pegged the Engineers as a team to watch in 1965.
Instead, Bjorkman left RPI late in the summer following the season after the sudden death of New Hampshire coach "Whoop" Snively. Suddenly needing a coach, RPI alum Garry Kearns, who had stayed in the Troy area after graduation, took over the program, and soon found a listless organization.
The reasons Bjorkman left the cupboard bare at RPI have not been well established, but all signs have pointed to problems with recruiting. Some recruits who had committed to RPI during Harkness' final season appear to have not ended up matriculating, leaving a weak class of incoming sophomores (in those days, freshmen were ineligible for varsity play). That was an immediate problem for Kearns' first season, which was middling thanks to the presence of Knightley and Sack.
Longer term, Bjorkman had his own recruiting failures that would haunt the program. It has been said that, coming from Minnesota, he had lacked the connections Harkness had in Ontario, which had been the school's most rich recruiting grounds. Also, of the recruits Bjorkman had been able to attract to RPI, few or none were able to withstand the school's difficult entry requirements. The combination of geographic and academic difficulties were apparently more than Bjorkman was prepared to handle, and the change of venue to Durham likely helped his own career immensely.
Meanwhile, back at RPI, Kearns was forced to throw teams together as best he could. The 1966 team, which suffered the most from Bjorkman's inability to draw quality recruits, won only three games, none in the ECAC, and most of the losses were by lopsided margins. The following season was little better in league play, as RPI skated to a 1-14 record in the ECAC, with a one-goal win over Army the only bright spot in league play, and a tie at home against Michigan the high point of the year.
Things got bad enough that fans started to leave in droves, and the school began to seriously ponder whether staying in the top level of the ECAC was truly in the best interest of the program. Ultimately, Kearns guided the program through the shallows, and by the time he left in 1969, the program was off life support and ready to continue in Division I.
The question of what would have become of the program had Snively not had a heart attack in the summer of 1964, opening the door for Bjorkman to leave RPI in the breach, is difficult to answer. Obviously, if Bjorkman had still been behind the bench in 1965, his recruiting problems would have been his own, and it's difficult to know how he would have dealt with them. The only real way to do this is to look at his career as a coach.
The Wildcats improved every season during Bjorkman's four-year tenure in Durham, but UNH was still playing outdoors in the mid-1960s, which basically killed any chance they had of winning championships. His last two years were the first in UNH's new rink, and both seasons were winning ones. Then in 1968, Bjorkman returned to western hockey, taking the helm at North Dakota. The Fighting Sioux had just come off a loss in the national championship game when he arrived, they would not return to that height until 1979 - the year after he left. In 10 years in Grand Forks, he compiled a record above .500 just twice. He is the only North Dakota coach since 1957 that never took the team to the Frozen Four.
Suffice to say, Bjorkman's legacy behind the bench, with the exception of the Kelley Award, was somewhat less than stellar - and in light of his recruiting struggles at RPI and subsequent difficulties coaching at a school that was already a traditional western power, it might be safe to say that the Institute didn't quite make the right call when it came to replacing Ned Harkness.
So, what if he'd stayed? Perhaps he could have managed, eventually, to find the right student-athletes from the right places with the right heads on their shoulders, but would he have been able to duplicate the relative success of that one season behind the bench? The evidence suggests that he probably wouldn't have been able to do that at RPI if he couldn't manage it at North Dakota. If Bjorkman had stuck around, the decline of the late 1960s probably still would have taken place, and it would have taken place without the grit and determination of an alum at the helm in Garry Kearns.
For better or for worse, the guidance that Kearns provided during his tenure as coach helped save the program - and secured for him a much deserved spot in the RPI Hockey Ring of Honor for his contributions as both a player and a coach. As good as Bjorkman's one season was - led, remember, by two RPI legends recruited by Harkness - there's not much doubt that further seasons would be unlikely to have materialized. Looking back today, Bjorkman's abrupt departure, which allowed the school to make a good decision in place of a bad one, may have helped save the program from being moved to what is today Division III.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
What If: Gordie's Goal
March 1954: Gordie Peterkin scores in overtime against Minnesota to give RPI its first national championship
Perry Como - Wanted
It is a testament to Ned Harkness that in just its fourth year, the modern version of the RPI hockey program was playing in the NCAA Tournament, and the following season was in the national championship game. The combined impact of Harkness, who would go on to establish himself not only with three Frozen Fours and a national championship at RPI but with four straight Frozen Fours and two more championships at Cornell, and the innovation of the RPI Field House created in the Engineers an early eastern powerhouse.
And yet, despite RPI playing in its second consecutive national tournament, the Engineers appeared something of an afterthought in Colorado Springs in 1954. Sure, RPI had finished third in the previous year's Frozen Four, but they certainly weren't going to be a match for Vic Heyliger and the back-to-back-to-back defending champions, the Michigan Wolverines, in the first round. They were from the east, and eastern teams simply couldn't match up well with the far better west. Besides, RPI wasn't even supposed to be there - everyone knew St. Lawrence, with its early season victory over Michigan State in its back pocket, was the more worthy team from the east. Only the Engineers' 4-2 victory over the Saints in Troy the previous week to earn a regular-season tie in the Tri-State League had sent them to Colorado - where they'd suffered twin 8-3 drubbings to Denver and Colorado College in late January.
But something funny happened on the way to the third place game - RPI handed Michigan, the only team to appear in all six previous NCAA tournaments (and four-time national champions), a 6-4 upset loss thanks in large part to Gordie Peterkin's hat trick. And despite their newly earned reputation as giant-killers, the Engineers were still huge underdogs to a Minnesota team that was physically bigger, had a larger roster, had been runners-up to Michigan the previous year, and had an extra day of rest following a 14-1 demolition of Boston College (a 13-point win that is still the largest margin of victory in the history of the NCAA tournament).
RPI jumped out to an 3-0 lead against the Gophers early in the second period, but Minnesota stormed back to take a 4-3 lead themselves. After Abbie Moore tied the game late in the third period off a pass from the great Frank Chiarelli, it was Peterkin's goal two minutes into the sudden death overtime that shocked the college hockey world and saw a little engineering school from upstate New York capture the east's second ever national crown.
Anyone who's watched an overtime game in the playoffs knows just how crucial every shift, every bounce of the puck can be. The sudden-death nature of overtime, and the requirement in the playoffs that there be a winner, makes every little detail so much more important. We've seen multiple overtime games in three of the last five years, none of which were won by RPI, so we ought to know just how devastating it can be to lose.
Several other teams know that pain on a larger level. St. Lawrence (1988), New Hampshire (1999), and Miami (2009) would all have national championships to celebrate today if they'd been able to get the bounce of the puck to go their way in the overtime period of a national championship. They couldn't - they don't. Michigan State (1959) and Minnesota-Duluth (1984) were in the same boat before they eventually won national titles, as was Minnesota following Peterkin's goal.
So the question is - what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if Minnesota's John Mayasich or Dick Dougherty had beaten Bob Fox rather than Peterkin putting the puck and Jim Mattson into the net?
Most immediately, Minnesota celebrates a national championship twenty years earlier than it actually did when Herb Brooks brought the Gophers their first title in 1974. Minnesota coach John Mariucci, who eventually helped start the Minnesota North Stars and for whom Minnesota's arena is named, would have a national championship on his record, perhaps the biggest thing that's missing from the Hockey Hall of Famer's resume.
Tangentially speaking, the 1959 Frozen Four may not have taken place at the RPI Field House if not for the Engineers' attention-grabbing national championship five years earlier, though the fact that the Field House was one of the nicer arenas in college hockey may have seen it end up there anyway.
For RPI, however, a loss in the 1954 national championship game could have had lasting repercussions, though there would have been little expectation of it at the time. The severity of those repercussions depends largely on how the lack of a national championship on his record would have affected the decisions of coach Ned Harkness. Overall, Harkness amassed a record of 176-96-7 during his time at RPI and brought the Engineers to the national tournament in 1953, 1954, and 1961.
Would that have been enough to pique Cornell's interest by itself when their coaching position came vacant in 1963? If not, it's possible Harkness could have stayed on at RPI longer, and the difficulties the team experienced in the late 1960s could possibly have been avoided. Perhaps, if Harkness had stayed long enough some of the same recruits he brought to Ithaca could have come to Troy, although given the differences in the academic offerings, it's almost certainly pie in the sky to suggest names like Ken Dryden would have appeared in the RPI history books. Ironically, a loss in 1954 - if it had led to Harkness staying in Troy - could have led to a boost in the program's pedigree during the 1960s and 1970s.
If Harkness had left for Cornell after all in 1963 - entirely possible, given the apparent problems he had in getting the players that he wanted due to academic restraints - the ensuing difficult years could have spelled disaster for the Engineers at the Division I level. The Institute struggled with the question of whether the program was to remain in the then-new Division I while it was limping to repeatedly poor showings, including a combined 1-17-0 ECAC record in 1966 and 1967, which had coincided with the departure of many of the smaller schools from the ECAC just a few years earlier into what was then called ECAC-II, soon to be called Division III.
As it was, one of the important elements encouraging the team to stay in Division I was the 1954 championship. Without that hardware and the legacy it created, it would have been easier for president Richard Folsom to fold the hand and bring the Engineers to the ECAC-II, where they would have been more competitive during the time period. RPI's hockey focus would be saved thanks to Harkness' success and the three NCAA tournament appearances, so the Engineers could well have become Division III powerhouses in the years that followed, but they'd forever be a quirk in the NCAA's record books - the only program to reach the NCAA tournament no longer playing in Division I.
Perry Como - Wanted
It is a testament to Ned Harkness that in just its fourth year, the modern version of the RPI hockey program was playing in the NCAA Tournament, and the following season was in the national championship game. The combined impact of Harkness, who would go on to establish himself not only with three Frozen Fours and a national championship at RPI but with four straight Frozen Fours and two more championships at Cornell, and the innovation of the RPI Field House created in the Engineers an early eastern powerhouse.
And yet, despite RPI playing in its second consecutive national tournament, the Engineers appeared something of an afterthought in Colorado Springs in 1954. Sure, RPI had finished third in the previous year's Frozen Four, but they certainly weren't going to be a match for Vic Heyliger and the back-to-back-to-back defending champions, the Michigan Wolverines, in the first round. They were from the east, and eastern teams simply couldn't match up well with the far better west. Besides, RPI wasn't even supposed to be there - everyone knew St. Lawrence, with its early season victory over Michigan State in its back pocket, was the more worthy team from the east. Only the Engineers' 4-2 victory over the Saints in Troy the previous week to earn a regular-season tie in the Tri-State League had sent them to Colorado - where they'd suffered twin 8-3 drubbings to Denver and Colorado College in late January.
But something funny happened on the way to the third place game - RPI handed Michigan, the only team to appear in all six previous NCAA tournaments (and four-time national champions), a 6-4 upset loss thanks in large part to Gordie Peterkin's hat trick. And despite their newly earned reputation as giant-killers, the Engineers were still huge underdogs to a Minnesota team that was physically bigger, had a larger roster, had been runners-up to Michigan the previous year, and had an extra day of rest following a 14-1 demolition of Boston College (a 13-point win that is still the largest margin of victory in the history of the NCAA tournament).
RPI jumped out to an 3-0 lead against the Gophers early in the second period, but Minnesota stormed back to take a 4-3 lead themselves. After Abbie Moore tied the game late in the third period off a pass from the great Frank Chiarelli, it was Peterkin's goal two minutes into the sudden death overtime that shocked the college hockey world and saw a little engineering school from upstate New York capture the east's second ever national crown.
Anyone who's watched an overtime game in the playoffs knows just how crucial every shift, every bounce of the puck can be. The sudden-death nature of overtime, and the requirement in the playoffs that there be a winner, makes every little detail so much more important. We've seen multiple overtime games in three of the last five years, none of which were won by RPI, so we ought to know just how devastating it can be to lose.
Several other teams know that pain on a larger level. St. Lawrence (1988), New Hampshire (1999), and Miami (2009) would all have national championships to celebrate today if they'd been able to get the bounce of the puck to go their way in the overtime period of a national championship. They couldn't - they don't. Michigan State (1959) and Minnesota-Duluth (1984) were in the same boat before they eventually won national titles, as was Minnesota following Peterkin's goal.
So the question is - what if the shoe was on the other foot? What if Minnesota's John Mayasich or Dick Dougherty had beaten Bob Fox rather than Peterkin putting the puck and Jim Mattson into the net?
Most immediately, Minnesota celebrates a national championship twenty years earlier than it actually did when Herb Brooks brought the Gophers their first title in 1974. Minnesota coach John Mariucci, who eventually helped start the Minnesota North Stars and for whom Minnesota's arena is named, would have a national championship on his record, perhaps the biggest thing that's missing from the Hockey Hall of Famer's resume.
Tangentially speaking, the 1959 Frozen Four may not have taken place at the RPI Field House if not for the Engineers' attention-grabbing national championship five years earlier, though the fact that the Field House was one of the nicer arenas in college hockey may have seen it end up there anyway.
For RPI, however, a loss in the 1954 national championship game could have had lasting repercussions, though there would have been little expectation of it at the time. The severity of those repercussions depends largely on how the lack of a national championship on his record would have affected the decisions of coach Ned Harkness. Overall, Harkness amassed a record of 176-96-7 during his time at RPI and brought the Engineers to the national tournament in 1953, 1954, and 1961.
Would that have been enough to pique Cornell's interest by itself when their coaching position came vacant in 1963? If not, it's possible Harkness could have stayed on at RPI longer, and the difficulties the team experienced in the late 1960s could possibly have been avoided. Perhaps, if Harkness had stayed long enough some of the same recruits he brought to Ithaca could have come to Troy, although given the differences in the academic offerings, it's almost certainly pie in the sky to suggest names like Ken Dryden would have appeared in the RPI history books. Ironically, a loss in 1954 - if it had led to Harkness staying in Troy - could have led to a boost in the program's pedigree during the 1960s and 1970s.
If Harkness had left for Cornell after all in 1963 - entirely possible, given the apparent problems he had in getting the players that he wanted due to academic restraints - the ensuing difficult years could have spelled disaster for the Engineers at the Division I level. The Institute struggled with the question of whether the program was to remain in the then-new Division I while it was limping to repeatedly poor showings, including a combined 1-17-0 ECAC record in 1966 and 1967, which had coincided with the departure of many of the smaller schools from the ECAC just a few years earlier into what was then called ECAC-II, soon to be called Division III.
As it was, one of the important elements encouraging the team to stay in Division I was the 1954 championship. Without that hardware and the legacy it created, it would have been easier for president Richard Folsom to fold the hand and bring the Engineers to the ECAC-II, where they would have been more competitive during the time period. RPI's hockey focus would be saved thanks to Harkness' success and the three NCAA tournament appearances, so the Engineers could well have become Division III powerhouses in the years that followed, but they'd forever be a quirk in the NCAA's record books - the only program to reach the NCAA tournament no longer playing in Division I.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
What If: Liver's Dream
1944: Livingston Houston becomes RPI's first alum to be named school president
Louis Jordan - G.I. Jive
The modern era of RPI hockey began in 1950, when the Engineers returned after 12 years of dormancy caused by the Great Depression and World War II to a brand new facility, then known as the RPI Field House. "Liver" Houston, a 1913 graduate of RPI who had played on the hockey team when he had been a student, was one of the major forces behind the construction of an indoor arena to allow the school to restart its program.
Houston was very closely associated with the school for much of his life. After starting out with Mobil shortly after graduating, he was back in Troy by 1919, and was elected a life trustee at the age of 34 in 1925, just 12 years after he graduated - by comparison, the most recent alums currently serving as trustees graduated in 1982. So by the time William O. Hotchkiss retired as RPI president in 1943, Houston had nearly 20 years of service as a trustee, and was by that time the chairman of the board of the Ludlow Valve Company in Troy.
Houston's selection as president made a great deal of sense, given his lengthy service to the school. When he took the presidency, America was in the midst of the Second World War. D-Day had not yet occurred, but he immediately began working toward the school's post-war future. Enrollment was down due to enlistments in the military, but once the war ended, RPI was ready to receive returning veterans in great number, due in large part to Houston's preparations, which included the construction of "Tin Town" where the Rensselaer Apartment Housing Project (RAHPs to students) are now located next to the Field House. Later, he spearheaded dormitory development at what is today called Freshman Hill.
As far as hockey is concerned, the Field House is Houston's rightful legacy, and the building now bears his name. A surplus Navy warehouse was brought in from Rhode Island, modified and reassembled, and after a year and a half, the school had a place not just to play hockey but for all sorts of public events, including commencement ceremonies.
But what if Houston had not been the school's choice to replace Hotchkiss? What if a less ambitious man had taken the office, one without a personal link to hockey or a desire to push for a project like the Field House? RPI as we know it today would be a very different place, and athletics would undoubtedly be part of that difference.
It's almost certain that hockey would not have flourished at the school as it did. Among schools that comprised the early Tri-State League which started in 1951, Clarkson had already been playing at Walker Arena since 1938, St. Lawrence and Middlebury were preparing to move indoors themselves. Meanwhile, Colgate and Williams dropped their programs after the first and second seasons of the Tri-State League respectively, due to their inability to compete with the schools that had indoor rinks.
Could RPI hockey have been restarted without the RPI Field House? It's possible, but it's likely that it would have suffered the same fate as Colgate and Williams, even if Ned Harkness had been at the helm. That would likely have left RPI, today, closer to the state of hockey at Williams - a Division III program without a great deal of distinction. Colgate, at least, can fall back on being a Division I school in all sports, which is why their current program exists at the top level (and eventually, became very competitive).
Ned Harkness, however, was at RPI as early as 1941 - predating Houston's ascension to the presidency - as the volunteer coach of the school's lacrosse team. In fact, he found wild success with the lacrosse team before the Field House had even been completed, completing an undefeated season in 1948 which culminated in a demonstration game at the 1948 Olympics in London where the Engineers represented the United States in a match against a British all-star team. He also led RPI to a de facto national championship in lacrosse in 1952, two years ahead of winning a de jure national crown in hockey.
Without the competition from a highly successful hockey program in the mid-1950s (including the fact that Harkness left the team in 1958 to focus on hockey), perhaps the Harkness-led lacrosse team would have gained the lion's share of the school's attention moving forward. Although the NCAA lacrosse championship was not established until 1971, it's possible RPI would today be known athletically as a lacrosse school similar to Johns Hopkins (a Division III school "playing up" in lacrosse), though the pedigree probably would not be on the level of the Blue Jays, who 35 de facto national crowns before the institution of the NCAA championship.
Meanwhile, the hockey program, if it still existed, would probably be playing in a smaller rink more suited for a D-III program. Union, without the impetus from Harkness to build its own rink, would either still be without hockey or would be in D-III alongside the Engineers, perhaps as part of NESCAC. St. Lawrence and Clarkson (and possibly Colgate), more outnumbered by the Ivies in the ECAC at the time of the league's split in 1984, would likely be in Hockey East today - if they were even still playing Division I hockey.
RPI's 1954 national championship represented not only a watershed moment for the sport at RPI, it also helped show that smaller schools could run with the big dogs in hockey. Without varsity hockey at RPI, Colorado College's two national championships in the 1950s could easily be written off as a bit of home cooking with the tournament taking place on their home ice for the first 10 years of its existence. Without the legacy of RPI's title, it's possible small schools in general would have opted to play small school hockey when the NCAA began making that distinction in the 1970s. No sure thing, of course, since the North Country schools are probably even more linked to the sport than RPI, and the relatively small number of schools playing hockey in the 1960s and 1970s probably would have favored keeping small schools even if they weren't as competitive... but a possibility nonetheless.
So it could be said that RPI's decision to make "Liver" Houston its post-war president had a lasting effect not only on RPI today, but its athletic department and perhaps even college hockey itself.
Louis Jordan - G.I. Jive
The modern era of RPI hockey began in 1950, when the Engineers returned after 12 years of dormancy caused by the Great Depression and World War II to a brand new facility, then known as the RPI Field House. "Liver" Houston, a 1913 graduate of RPI who had played on the hockey team when he had been a student, was one of the major forces behind the construction of an indoor arena to allow the school to restart its program.
Houston was very closely associated with the school for much of his life. After starting out with Mobil shortly after graduating, he was back in Troy by 1919, and was elected a life trustee at the age of 34 in 1925, just 12 years after he graduated - by comparison, the most recent alums currently serving as trustees graduated in 1982. So by the time William O. Hotchkiss retired as RPI president in 1943, Houston had nearly 20 years of service as a trustee, and was by that time the chairman of the board of the Ludlow Valve Company in Troy.
Houston's selection as president made a great deal of sense, given his lengthy service to the school. When he took the presidency, America was in the midst of the Second World War. D-Day had not yet occurred, but he immediately began working toward the school's post-war future. Enrollment was down due to enlistments in the military, but once the war ended, RPI was ready to receive returning veterans in great number, due in large part to Houston's preparations, which included the construction of "Tin Town" where the Rensselaer Apartment Housing Project (RAHPs to students) are now located next to the Field House. Later, he spearheaded dormitory development at what is today called Freshman Hill.
As far as hockey is concerned, the Field House is Houston's rightful legacy, and the building now bears his name. A surplus Navy warehouse was brought in from Rhode Island, modified and reassembled, and after a year and a half, the school had a place not just to play hockey but for all sorts of public events, including commencement ceremonies.
But what if Houston had not been the school's choice to replace Hotchkiss? What if a less ambitious man had taken the office, one without a personal link to hockey or a desire to push for a project like the Field House? RPI as we know it today would be a very different place, and athletics would undoubtedly be part of that difference.
It's almost certain that hockey would not have flourished at the school as it did. Among schools that comprised the early Tri-State League which started in 1951, Clarkson had already been playing at Walker Arena since 1938, St. Lawrence and Middlebury were preparing to move indoors themselves. Meanwhile, Colgate and Williams dropped their programs after the first and second seasons of the Tri-State League respectively, due to their inability to compete with the schools that had indoor rinks.
Could RPI hockey have been restarted without the RPI Field House? It's possible, but it's likely that it would have suffered the same fate as Colgate and Williams, even if Ned Harkness had been at the helm. That would likely have left RPI, today, closer to the state of hockey at Williams - a Division III program without a great deal of distinction. Colgate, at least, can fall back on being a Division I school in all sports, which is why their current program exists at the top level (and eventually, became very competitive).
Ned Harkness, however, was at RPI as early as 1941 - predating Houston's ascension to the presidency - as the volunteer coach of the school's lacrosse team. In fact, he found wild success with the lacrosse team before the Field House had even been completed, completing an undefeated season in 1948 which culminated in a demonstration game at the 1948 Olympics in London where the Engineers represented the United States in a match against a British all-star team. He also led RPI to a de facto national championship in lacrosse in 1952, two years ahead of winning a de jure national crown in hockey.
Without the competition from a highly successful hockey program in the mid-1950s (including the fact that Harkness left the team in 1958 to focus on hockey), perhaps the Harkness-led lacrosse team would have gained the lion's share of the school's attention moving forward. Although the NCAA lacrosse championship was not established until 1971, it's possible RPI would today be known athletically as a lacrosse school similar to Johns Hopkins (a Division III school "playing up" in lacrosse), though the pedigree probably would not be on the level of the Blue Jays, who 35 de facto national crowns before the institution of the NCAA championship.
Meanwhile, the hockey program, if it still existed, would probably be playing in a smaller rink more suited for a D-III program. Union, without the impetus from Harkness to build its own rink, would either still be without hockey or would be in D-III alongside the Engineers, perhaps as part of NESCAC. St. Lawrence and Clarkson (and possibly Colgate), more outnumbered by the Ivies in the ECAC at the time of the league's split in 1984, would likely be in Hockey East today - if they were even still playing Division I hockey.
RPI's 1954 national championship represented not only a watershed moment for the sport at RPI, it also helped show that smaller schools could run with the big dogs in hockey. Without varsity hockey at RPI, Colorado College's two national championships in the 1950s could easily be written off as a bit of home cooking with the tournament taking place on their home ice for the first 10 years of its existence. Without the legacy of RPI's title, it's possible small schools in general would have opted to play small school hockey when the NCAA began making that distinction in the 1970s. No sure thing, of course, since the North Country schools are probably even more linked to the sport than RPI, and the relatively small number of schools playing hockey in the 1960s and 1970s probably would have favored keeping small schools even if they weren't as competitive... but a possibility nonetheless.
So it could be said that RPI's decision to make "Liver" Houston its post-war president had a lasting effect not only on RPI today, but its athletic department and perhaps even college hockey itself.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Men's Hockey - at Yale/Brown (7/8 Dec)
Heading into the mid-season break, it was obvious that RPI needed a boost if they were going to avoid falling well behind the rest of the pack in the ECAC. The Engineers provided themselves with the boost they needed, heading on the road and picking up three crucial points as they exploded on Friday for a blowout, upset victory over nationally-ranked Yale before tangling with a pesky Brown team that would not go away, settling for a 2-2 tie but emerging from the weekend in much better shape than they'd entered.
Yale
Tinordi-Schroeder-Lee
Rogic-Laliberte-Haggerty
Zalewski-Miller-Bubela
Fulton-O'Grady-Higgs
Leonard-Bailen
Leboeuf-Bradley
Curadi-Dolan
Upcoming games
27 Dec - at #17 St. Cloud State
28 Dec - at #17 St. Cloud State
31 Dec - Sacred Heart
04 Jan - at #6 Boston University
05 Jan - at #2 New Hampshire
Tinordi-Schroeder-Lee
Rogic-Laliberte-Haggerty
Zalewski-Miller-Bubela
Fulton-O'Grady-Higgs
Leonard-Bailen
Leboeuf-Bradley
Curadi-Dolan
Kasdorf
An illness to forward Matt Neal put him on the sidelines Friday night, necessitating a slight jumbling of the lines. Jason Kasdorf earned his third consecutive start in net.
Penalties were the name of the game in the first period, as both sides picked up three minors each, though both teams ultimately went 0-for-3 in the first 20 minutes on the man advantage. Key for the Engineers on the weekend was power play improvement after a dreadful 0-for-9 showing at home against Quinnipiac, and in the first period, despite a lack of goals, it was apparent that the power play was looking much better than it had a week prior.
Yale would earn the only goal of the first period on a bad pass behind the RPI net by Luke Curadi. The towering defenseman attempted to move the puck with a pass through forecheckers to the forwards in the neutral zone, but the pass was intercepted at the point by the Bulldogs. With all kinds of ice to work with and plenty of time before RPI could even get into his vicinity, the defenseman lasered a shot that was perfectly placed to beat Kasdorf and put Yale ahead 1-0.
Unfortunately for Yale, that was all the offense they would be able to put up for the entire game. Kasdorf was dialed in for the Engineers, stopping 36 of 37 shots and getting good looks at the puck, making big saves when he had to and keeping rebounds from appearing on easier shots.
Meanwhile, the RPI offense got going midway through the second period and started firing on all cylinders. Mike Zalewski and his classmates got things started with an impressive give-and-go move in transition and through traffic, with Zalewski passing back and forth with Milos Bubela before blasting it into the net to tie the game.
Just over a minute later, RPI broke through its power play funk with a goal on the man advantage. Bubela rifled a shot from the bottom of the right faceoff circle, simply powering the puck past the Yale netminder to put RPI up 2-1 with the Engineers' second goal in 1:08.
Jacob Laliberte gave RPI a two-goal cushion by hanging out in front of the Yale net a little over six minutes later. After Brock Higgs got his man to bite with a nifty move behind the net that put the defender down on the ice, he skated around to the left side of the net and simply passed across to the waiting Laliberte, who one-timed it in to make it 3-1.
The Engineers disabused Yale of any possibility of comeback early on in the third period as Mark Miller notched his second goal of the season 2:11 in to push the score to 4-1, followed by a highlight-reel goal by Johnny Rogic, who scored from his back to make it 5-1 Engineers. Ryan Haggerty added a sixth goal against a relief goaltender, his fourth goal of the year making it 6-1 RPI with over 12 minutes left in the game.
RPI's attack gradually started to pull back after attaining a five-goal edge, and Yale, it was clear, was not on their game either offensively or defensively, but the Engineers capitalized well on both sides of the puck. The Engineers finished the game on a high note despite nearly back-to-back calls against Curadi and Bo Dolan giving Yale a late five-on-three, but Kasdorf and the penalty kill stood tall despite a 42 second two-man disadvantage to end the game, allowing no more goals.
The win represented RPI's first ECAC victory of the season, and marked the third time in four years that the Engineers were able to pick up a win at the Yale Whale. It was also the second win of the season against a ranked opponent, the first since the season's opening game against Ferris State.
Brown
Tinordi-O'Grady-Lee
Higgs-Laliberte-Haggerty
Zalewski-Miller-Bubela
Fulton-Rogic-Neal
Leonard-Bailen
Leboeuf-Bradley
Curadi-Dolan
Neal returned to the lineup, replacing Zach Schroeder, but he was placed on the fourth line (presumably to ease him back into things). That moved Brock Higgs onto the Laliberte line, with Johnny Rogic moving to center the fourth line and O'Grady centering Tinordi and Lee in place of Schroeder.
Brown, the previous night, had managed a tie with Union after giving up three goals in the first period. The backup goaltender, Anthony Borelli, came on in relief and stoned the Dutchmen in the second and third periods as well as overtime to pick up the tie, not surprisingly he was in net for Brown against the Engineers.
A penalty to Brock Higgs for boarding four and a half minutes into the game and a lackluster Brown power play effort was the only notable event of the first period, which saw RPI lead in shots 9-7. Neither team really put forward an overly impressive showing in the opening 20 minutes, and neither had any real quality opportunities to score.
Ryan Haggerty's second goal of the weekend and fifth of the season came down at 13:14 of the second period to give RPI a 1-0 lead. Haggerty scored on a rebound opportunity to finally break the scoreless tie over halfway through the game.
The second period was the only one of the game with multiple penalties called, and RPI had three chances against Brown's sub-par penalty kill. The first power play early in the period was decent, but the second displayed shades of the struggles that were evident last weekend. The third power play, coming just a couple of minutes after the Haggerty goal, was markedly better than the second but still was unable to result in an insurance goal.
The Engineers took the 1-0 lead into the third period, but just 42 seconds into the third, Brown tied it up on a horrifying display of poor defense by the Engineers, as the forward line failed to retreat to help out the defense after a turnover in the RPI zone.
RPI would get the lead right back on a slick tap-in by Matt Neal, who took Travis Fulton's shot through the crease and just poked it home, giving Neal his fourth goal of the season and Fulton his second assist of the weekend. Fulton would later come within inches of scoring his first collegiate goal after picking off a pass from Borelli behind his own net and whipping it toward the empty cage. Borelli somehow managed to get back to put a pad on a puck that looked destined for a goal, saving the game for the Bears.
With seven and a half minutes left to play, Brown were able to find the equalizer to make it 2-2, and from there the Bears looked very hungry for the go-ahead goal while the Engineers looked more like they were hanging on for dear life. No penalties were called in the third period and RPI outshot Brown 11-10 in the third period, but the momentum was all with the home team late in the game.
In overtime, Brown managed four shots against RPI's two, but neither team was able to break through. A blown icing call gave Brown possession in the RPI zone for the final 30 seconds, and despite frenzied shooting and defense, Kasdorf and the Engineers were able to at least escape with one point, despite blowing a pair of third period leads.
An illness to forward Matt Neal put him on the sidelines Friday night, necessitating a slight jumbling of the lines. Jason Kasdorf earned his third consecutive start in net.
Penalties were the name of the game in the first period, as both sides picked up three minors each, though both teams ultimately went 0-for-3 in the first 20 minutes on the man advantage. Key for the Engineers on the weekend was power play improvement after a dreadful 0-for-9 showing at home against Quinnipiac, and in the first period, despite a lack of goals, it was apparent that the power play was looking much better than it had a week prior.
Yale would earn the only goal of the first period on a bad pass behind the RPI net by Luke Curadi. The towering defenseman attempted to move the puck with a pass through forecheckers to the forwards in the neutral zone, but the pass was intercepted at the point by the Bulldogs. With all kinds of ice to work with and plenty of time before RPI could even get into his vicinity, the defenseman lasered a shot that was perfectly placed to beat Kasdorf and put Yale ahead 1-0.
Unfortunately for Yale, that was all the offense they would be able to put up for the entire game. Kasdorf was dialed in for the Engineers, stopping 36 of 37 shots and getting good looks at the puck, making big saves when he had to and keeping rebounds from appearing on easier shots.
Meanwhile, the RPI offense got going midway through the second period and started firing on all cylinders. Mike Zalewski and his classmates got things started with an impressive give-and-go move in transition and through traffic, with Zalewski passing back and forth with Milos Bubela before blasting it into the net to tie the game.
Just over a minute later, RPI broke through its power play funk with a goal on the man advantage. Bubela rifled a shot from the bottom of the right faceoff circle, simply powering the puck past the Yale netminder to put RPI up 2-1 with the Engineers' second goal in 1:08.
Jacob Laliberte gave RPI a two-goal cushion by hanging out in front of the Yale net a little over six minutes later. After Brock Higgs got his man to bite with a nifty move behind the net that put the defender down on the ice, he skated around to the left side of the net and simply passed across to the waiting Laliberte, who one-timed it in to make it 3-1.
The Engineers disabused Yale of any possibility of comeback early on in the third period as Mark Miller notched his second goal of the season 2:11 in to push the score to 4-1, followed by a highlight-reel goal by Johnny Rogic, who scored from his back to make it 5-1 Engineers. Ryan Haggerty added a sixth goal against a relief goaltender, his fourth goal of the year making it 6-1 RPI with over 12 minutes left in the game.
RPI's attack gradually started to pull back after attaining a five-goal edge, and Yale, it was clear, was not on their game either offensively or defensively, but the Engineers capitalized well on both sides of the puck. The Engineers finished the game on a high note despite nearly back-to-back calls against Curadi and Bo Dolan giving Yale a late five-on-three, but Kasdorf and the penalty kill stood tall despite a 42 second two-man disadvantage to end the game, allowing no more goals.
The win represented RPI's first ECAC victory of the season, and marked the third time in four years that the Engineers were able to pick up a win at the Yale Whale. It was also the second win of the season against a ranked opponent, the first since the season's opening game against Ferris State.
Brown
Tinordi-O'Grady-Lee
Higgs-Laliberte-Haggerty
Zalewski-Miller-Bubela
Fulton-Rogic-Neal
Leonard-Bailen
Leboeuf-Bradley
Curadi-Dolan
Kasdorf
Neal returned to the lineup, replacing Zach Schroeder, but he was placed on the fourth line (presumably to ease him back into things). That moved Brock Higgs onto the Laliberte line, with Johnny Rogic moving to center the fourth line and O'Grady centering Tinordi and Lee in place of Schroeder.
Brown, the previous night, had managed a tie with Union after giving up three goals in the first period. The backup goaltender, Anthony Borelli, came on in relief and stoned the Dutchmen in the second and third periods as well as overtime to pick up the tie, not surprisingly he was in net for Brown against the Engineers.
A penalty to Brock Higgs for boarding four and a half minutes into the game and a lackluster Brown power play effort was the only notable event of the first period, which saw RPI lead in shots 9-7. Neither team really put forward an overly impressive showing in the opening 20 minutes, and neither had any real quality opportunities to score.
Ryan Haggerty's second goal of the weekend and fifth of the season came down at 13:14 of the second period to give RPI a 1-0 lead. Haggerty scored on a rebound opportunity to finally break the scoreless tie over halfway through the game.
The second period was the only one of the game with multiple penalties called, and RPI had three chances against Brown's sub-par penalty kill. The first power play early in the period was decent, but the second displayed shades of the struggles that were evident last weekend. The third power play, coming just a couple of minutes after the Haggerty goal, was markedly better than the second but still was unable to result in an insurance goal.
The Engineers took the 1-0 lead into the third period, but just 42 seconds into the third, Brown tied it up on a horrifying display of poor defense by the Engineers, as the forward line failed to retreat to help out the defense after a turnover in the RPI zone.
RPI would get the lead right back on a slick tap-in by Matt Neal, who took Travis Fulton's shot through the crease and just poked it home, giving Neal his fourth goal of the season and Fulton his second assist of the weekend. Fulton would later come within inches of scoring his first collegiate goal after picking off a pass from Borelli behind his own net and whipping it toward the empty cage. Borelli somehow managed to get back to put a pad on a puck that looked destined for a goal, saving the game for the Bears.
With seven and a half minutes left to play, Brown were able to find the equalizer to make it 2-2, and from there the Bears looked very hungry for the go-ahead goal while the Engineers looked more like they were hanging on for dear life. No penalties were called in the third period and RPI outshot Brown 11-10 in the third period, but the momentum was all with the home team late in the game.
In overtime, Brown managed four shots against RPI's two, but neither team was able to break through. A blown icing call gave Brown possession in the RPI zone for the final 30 seconds, and despite frenzied shooting and defense, Kasdorf and the Engineers were able to at least escape with one point, despite blowing a pair of third period leads.
Other junk - Ranked teams in the ECAC this week include #9 Quinnipiac (swept Princeton, up four), #10 Dartmouth (beat Vermont, no change), #12 Cornell (idle, down one), #14 Union (tied Brown and Yale, down two), #15 Yale (lost to RPI and tied Union, no change), and #18 Harvard (tied Merrimack, up two). Also receiving votes was Colgate (35). Other RPI opponents ranked this week are #2 New Hampshire (down one, with 9 first place votes), #6 Boston University (up one), #17 St. Cloud State (no change), #19 Ferris State (down three) and #20 Minnesota State (previously unranked).
Matt Neal sat out on Friday with an illness, leaving RPI's iron man club at four heading into the winter break - Bailen, Bubela, Leboeuf, and Miller. These are the only players on the roster who have played in all 12 games this season.
The freshman line of Mike Zalewski, Mark Miller, and Milos Bubela has played very well of late. The trio has been together for four consecutive games and looks like a battle-hardened group. Their two-game goal scoring streak was stopped against Brown, but they looked very good against both opponents on the weekend.
Jason Kasdorf, now eligible for inclusion in the national statistics with a minimum of 33% of team games played, is fourth in the nation in goals against with a 1.46 GAA, second in the ECAC only to Quinnipiac's Eric Hartzell, who sits at 1.29. He is third in the nation and first in the ECAC with a save percentage of .945. We may be seeing more of him in the near future.
Jacob Laliberte has backed off the national lead in scoring, but his rate of 1.17 points per game still has him in the top 30, sitting tied for 25th in the nation.
The Engineers are now off until just after Christmas, when they play the first two of five non-conference games out in Minnesota against nationally-ranked St. Cloud State. That continues with a home game on New Year's Eve against Sacred Heart, and rounds out against national powerhouses Boston University and New Hampshire. The stretch should present a serious gut-check before the remainder of the ECAC schedule begins the following weekend.
ECAC Standings (by winning percentage in parentheses)
1 (1). Quinnipiac - 16 points (8-0-0)
2 (2). Dartmouth - 9 points (4-1-1)
3 (3). Union - 9 points (3-2-3)
4 (7). Cornell - 8 points (3-3-2)
5 (5). Clarkson - 7 points (3-3-1, +3 GD)
6 (6). Yale - 7 points (3-3-1, -2 GD)
7 (8). Princeton - 7 points (2-3-3, -4 GD)
8 (9). Colgate - 7 points (3-4-1, -6 GD)
9 (4). Harvard - 6 points (3-3-0)
10 (10). Brown - 4 points (0-3-4, -3 GD)
11 (11). St. Lawrence - 4 points (1-3-2, -9 GD)
12 (12). RPI - 4 points (1-5-2)
RPI at #15 Yale
ECAC Game - Ingalls Rink (New Haven, CT)
12/7/12 - 7:00pm
RESULT: RPI 6, Yale 1
BOX SCORES
College Hockey Stats
USCHO
Matt Neal sat out on Friday with an illness, leaving RPI's iron man club at four heading into the winter break - Bailen, Bubela, Leboeuf, and Miller. These are the only players on the roster who have played in all 12 games this season.
The freshman line of Mike Zalewski, Mark Miller, and Milos Bubela has played very well of late. The trio has been together for four consecutive games and looks like a battle-hardened group. Their two-game goal scoring streak was stopped against Brown, but they looked very good against both opponents on the weekend.
Jason Kasdorf, now eligible for inclusion in the national statistics with a minimum of 33% of team games played, is fourth in the nation in goals against with a 1.46 GAA, second in the ECAC only to Quinnipiac's Eric Hartzell, who sits at 1.29. He is third in the nation and first in the ECAC with a save percentage of .945. We may be seeing more of him in the near future.
Jacob Laliberte has backed off the national lead in scoring, but his rate of 1.17 points per game still has him in the top 30, sitting tied for 25th in the nation.
The Engineers are now off until just after Christmas, when they play the first two of five non-conference games out in Minnesota against nationally-ranked St. Cloud State. That continues with a home game on New Year's Eve against Sacred Heart, and rounds out against national powerhouses Boston University and New Hampshire. The stretch should present a serious gut-check before the remainder of the ECAC schedule begins the following weekend.
ECAC Standings (by winning percentage in parentheses)
1 (1). Quinnipiac - 16 points (8-0-0)
2 (2). Dartmouth - 9 points (4-1-1)
3 (3). Union - 9 points (3-2-3)
4 (7). Cornell - 8 points (3-3-2)
5 (5). Clarkson - 7 points (3-3-1, +3 GD)
6 (6). Yale - 7 points (3-3-1, -2 GD)
7 (8). Princeton - 7 points (2-3-3, -4 GD)
8 (9). Colgate - 7 points (3-4-1, -6 GD)
9 (4). Harvard - 6 points (3-3-0)
10 (10). Brown - 4 points (0-3-4, -3 GD)
11 (11). St. Lawrence - 4 points (1-3-2, -9 GD)
12 (12). RPI - 4 points (1-5-2)
RPI at #15 Yale
ECAC Game - Ingalls Rink (New Haven, CT)
12/7/12 - 7:00pm
RESULT: RPI 6, Yale 1
BOX SCORES
College Hockey Stats
USCHO
RECAPS
RPI
Troy Record
Albany Times Union
New Haven Register
VIDEO
Yale All-Access (full game)
RECORD: 4-6-3 (1-5-1 ECAC, 3 points)
RPI
Troy Record
Albany Times Union
New Haven Register
VIDEO
Yale All-Access (full game)
RECORD: 4-6-3 (1-5-1 ECAC, 3 points)
RPI at Brown
ECAC Game - Meehan Auditorium (Providence, RI)
12/8/12 - 7:00pm
RESULT: RPI 2, Brown 2
ECAC Game - Meehan Auditorium (Providence, RI)
12/8/12 - 7:00pm
RESULT: RPI 2, Brown 2
RECORD: 4-6-4 (1-5-2 ECAC, 4 points)
Upcoming games
27 Dec - at #17 St. Cloud State
28 Dec - at #17 St. Cloud State
31 Dec - Sacred Heart
04 Jan - at #6 Boston University
05 Jan - at #2 New Hampshire
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