Reading all of the posts where people have been giving their
predictions of national or league standings has caused me to think
some more about RPI's (aka Rensselaer) chances for the coming year.
It seems to me that because of the scholarship limitation, RPI is in a
four-year cycle.
 
To digress for a minute.  I am curious if other schools also see this-
the same strengths and weakneses reappearing every four years.
 
In the fall of 1991, RPI had lost most of its scoring power -- Joe
Juneau, Bruce Coles, etc.  The only returning forwards were seniors Rick
Borina, Ivan Moore, junior Cam Matches, and sophomores Xavier Majic,
Ron Pasco, and Jeff Gabriel.  (There also were some defensemen who
sometimes played forward.)  The upperclassmen were not scorers and the
sophomores had undistinguished seasons as freshmen.  I think that the
highest scoring returning player was a defenseman.  The defensemen
were regarded as the strength of the team in preseason predictions but
it was hard to believe that they were going to carry the team based
upon their performance the previous season.  Anyway, we know what
happened that year.  RPI finished 10th in the ECAC and then upset
number 7 Vermont and number 1 Harvard before falling to I think St
Lawrence in the ECAC tourney.  This was mainly due to the maturing of
the sophomore forwards and the play of the incoming freshmen.
 
So how does this team compare with that of 1991-92?  IMHO, the
returning forwards have considerably more proven talent than those
four years ago.  I have a harder time comparing the defense because I
never saw the 1990-91 team and it is impossible to make any statement
about defensive play purely on stats and the few biased accounts that
I read in clippings from Troy and Albany papers.  On the whole, I
think that the returning defensemen this year are superior to those
from four years ago.  Now we come to the incoming recruits -- in both
1991 and this year, most are forwards because that is where the
graduation losses are.  For some unknown reason, the articles that I
saw four years gave more details about Hamelin, Askew et al. than this
year's articles have.  The obvious difference that I see is that
this year's frosh are bigger than four years ago.  (Also slightly
older.)  I have not seen any scoring stats for most of the incoming
freshmen, but these are not always that indicative of college
performance anyway.
 
In summary, it appears to me that the 1995-96 team is better than the
1991-92 team.  Of course, a more important question is how it compares
to 1994-95, and an even more important question is how it compares to
43 other Div-I teams this year.
 
Disclaimer: all of the above was written in Washington, DC which is
definitely not a college hockey hotbed.
 
Ralph Baer
RPI '68, '70, '74
 
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