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In the critical final weekend of the regular season, Rensselaer came up short against Princeton and finished the season in eleventh place.

On Friday night, Princeton made it a regular season sweep with a 5-2 drubbing of the Engineers. Princeton scored five goals in under nine minutes. The best moment for RPI probably came at 5:16 of the third period, when Kevin Croxton scored his first goal in 22 games. Considering how many goals he scored in his career before this scoreless streak, it's been an amazingly frustrating period for him.

It's still hard for me to believe that Princeton beat RPI twice this year, considering how badly they played against other ECAC Hockey League opponents. We finished behind Princeton in the standings because of these losses.

On Saturday, last place Yale extended Rensselaer to overtime before Kevin Croxton scored a last minute goal to give RPI a 3-2 victory. That goal was Croxton's 100th career point-- congratulations to him on a significant achievement. Jonathan Ornelas and Kevin Broad scored the other goals for us.

RPI moves into the playoffs next weekend in a best-of-three series at sixth-ranked Brown University. There is hope in the series against Brown-- RPI tied and beat them during the regular season.

The Rensselaer Men's Hockey Team ends the 2004-2005 regular season with a 14-20-2 record. The final ECACHL record is 6-15-1, good for 11th place (out of 12 teams). This is a very poor record, particularly considering the prior year's offensive performance and the number of returning contributors. The Times Union pointed out that RPI has experienced the worst three-year slump in the history of the program. This year's seniors are the first class in history to play through two 20-loss seasons.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 7:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All you need to know about this weekend is what Men's Hockey Coach Dan Fridgen said to sum up the 1-0 loss to Colgate on Saturday night:

It's sad, but we've let rugby creep back into our game.

Friday night, RPI lost to Cornell 3-0. This game was unique in that it was the first NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Game started by two goaltenders from the State of Texas, Cornell's David McKee and RPI's Andrew Martin. According to USCHO, they've known each other since childhood. Probably true, since hardly anybody played hockey in Texas back then,.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Men's Hockey Team beat Brown University 3-2 on Saturday night, extending the team's undefeated streak in Big Red Freakout games to 15 (11 wins and 4 ties). Kirk MacDonald put a blistering shot in off the crossbar with 8.3 seconds left in regulation to seal the victory. The sellout croud of 5,152 went berzerk because most of them had already concluded that the game was going to overtime. Andrew Martin made 30 saves to get the win.

Prior to the Freakout, the 1985 NCAA Championship Team was honored on the twentieth anniversary of their incredible season. Most of the players from the team were in attendance, including Mark Jooris, whose unusual professional hockey career in Europe was documented in the Times Union on Friday.

Earlier in the day, an alumni game was held, with about 40 players participating. This was the largest turnout of hockey alumni in the last 10 years, even surpassing last year's turnout for the fiftieth anniversary of the 1954 NCAA Championship.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)