Brian Morris wrote: > > The RPI Engineers, doing their best Lake State imitation, thoroughly dominate > Princeton and win the ECAC Championship by a score of 5-1. RPI took a 1-0 > lead into the second period, 2-0 lead into the third and break it open early in > the final stanza with three early scores. > > In all fairness, this is the most unexpected victory in RPI history. The last > two weekends have seen the Engineers play a style of hockey that was not > attempted the whole season. Coupled with the stellar play of Mike Tamburro, > who seems to be proving he deserved more than honorable mention in the ECAC > awards, this team just may not be finished yet. > While I too am overjoyed by RPI's run in the ECAC tourney, I doubt that it is "the most unexpected victory in RPI history". Assuming that we are talking about a string of victories, I would vote for the '54 National Championship where they beat Michigan and Minnesota. Considering that RPI had lost their 3 earlier games against western teams (2 vs Denver and 1 vs CC), I would vote for this. This year as has repeatdely been stated, the ECAC has been well-balanced and anyone was capable of a run -- it was good to see that it was RPI. By the way, is there anyone on Hockey-L who is willing to admit that they are old enough to have watched the '54 tournment? If we are talking about single games then I would not call the victory over Princeton unexpected. I think that Princeton was handicapped by losses of key players -- more so than Askew's absense hurt RPI. I think also that Princeton couldn't help being overconfident due to their rout of RPI 9-1 back in December, the same as Clarkson probably suffered partially due to overconfidence against the Tigers due to their previous 11-1 victory. Off the top of my head, I would list the following as candidates for most improbable RPI victory. I suspect that there are others that either slip my mind or are before my time. 12/4/68 RPI 4 Cornell 3 (OT) against Dryden and company 1/14/69 RPI 7 BU 0 with center Barry Sherwood in goal 12/1/70 RPI 6 Cornell 3 breaking Cornell's victory streak from the previous year 3/5/74 RPI 7 UNH 6 (#8 defeating #1 in ECAC playoffs) 3/7/92 RPI 4 Harvard 3 (#10 defeating #1 in ECAC playoffs) The ordering above is chronological, and it is biased in favor of games that I saw. Now if I had to list "the most unexpected DEFEAT in RPI history," I would start with an even longer list. Ralph Baer RPI '68, '70, '74