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.