Last night at Houston Fieldhouse the RPI Engineers emerged with a 3-1 victory in the first game of their ECAC Quarterfinal match-up with Union. The game had all the elements for a Union victory: tight forechecking, solid goaltending, even bad officiating. In fact Union won two of the three periods of play, but they didn't win the most important element--the score. Since it's a Union contest, it's not hard to write-up. Offensive forays for either team are necessarily few and far between. RPI, cognizant of the kind of game they were in for, flew out of the starting gate in an effort to score a goal or two before the Dutchman could get their grinding defense operating. Coach Dan Fridgen had come up with a plan that would empahsize hitting and short passes as a means to cut down on Union counterattacks, and in the first period the strategy succeeded. After a series of penalties to the #27's, RPI's Murphy and Union's Kimble, Alain St. Hilaire gains control of the puck at the blue line, and sends a nice little pass to defenseman George Murray, uncharacterisically pinching in down low. Murray's inelegant shot is stopped by Union's Koenig, but Eric Healy skates in to bury the rebound into the open corner of the net. RPI takes the initial lead, 1-0, at 10:56. Shortly thereafter the most controversial play of the night takes place. At 12:40 a Union shot hits the pipe, and, according to my notes, misses the net by maybe a centimeter or so. The goal judge doesn't see the play as a goal, nor does head referee Taylor. But later on the Channel 13 news the video replay seems to show the puck hitting net. After hitting the pipe the puck riccochets straight back out, which usually means no goal. Also no one in the Fiehldhouse complained about the call, which also makes the call curious. After the game sportcaster Roger Wyland saw fit to base his comments to Dan Fridgen solely about the controversial non-goal, to which Fridge shrugged that's just the bounces of the game. The play proves doubly significant as RPI will score the game winner shortly thereafter. At 16:01 Dan Riva fights to get the puck down the right wing, and slides the puck across to an unattended Pete Gardiner. Gardiner roofs the puck to give RPI the 2-1 lead, with Aldous also receiving as assist. The second period sees play begin to return to the Union script: no scoring, few shots, lots of checking, great goaltending. Freshman Joel Laing in particular justifies Fridgen's decision to give him the starting nod over Scott Prekaski, thereby breaking up the rotation, as his play in the second and third period will win the game for RPI. And the third--all Union, all the time, with RPI hanging on by their shoe laces. After a quiet initial four minutes, the Dutchman go into gear and aided by some questionable calls from referee Taylor, take control of the game. The officiating IMO was poor last night, not only because of the lopsided number of penalties against the Engineers through the first two periods, penalties that came from Union dives and clean Engineer checks, but also the make-ups in the third, where RPI got away with a couple of punches and elbows against the boards. At one point RPI's Brian Tapper slugs a Union player against the boards but play continues. At 6:19 Union manages to get on the board as Will picks the corner clean on Laing's glove side, Saterland and Antoine receiving assists. Naturally that throws the Union forecheckers into a frenzy, and the rest of the game will be played in the Engineer end. This unfortunately seems to be the pattern of the last few weeks as the Engineer third period has become increasingly shaky. RPI chases the puck around its zone, and endures the slugfest from the Union attack. Union fails to capitalize however as their dearth of finishers doesn't provide enough firepower to solve Laing. Most of the Union shots come from difficult angles, which Laing easily chokes off, or are of the unscreened variety. After Koenig is pulled, Eric Healy scores an empty net goal, at 19:07 to ice the game. Tapper and St. Hilaire receive gift assists, and the Engineers go home with their first tight victory of the year. It should be more of the same tonight. RPI must expect that the Dutchman will play the second game like they did the third period, and it won't be a pretty contest. Hopefully the non-existent Engineer power play will show a little more life. Friday night's contest showed the Engineer power play reach new lows of futility, often not even garnering a shot in the few opportunities offered. The Engineers will have to discover some way to get more shots on Koenig if they want to move on to Lake Placid. *************************************************************** Brian Morris RPI Engineers--Big and Nasty [log in to unmask] ====>Route 7 Championships HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.