Carson Butterwick scored twice and the Rensselaer Engineers held on to defeat the St. Lawrence Saints, 3-2, to jump into seventh place in the ECAC. The one-goal loss was the 12th of the season for the Saints.
The Engineers never trailed in the game as Butterwick got an easy tap in on the power play to open up the scoring. Matt Murley found Butterwick open in the slot and he put it past Mike McKenna.
The Saints came back when Charlie Daniels found the puck and put it past Nathan Marsters, but the Engineers responded with two goals to take a 3-1 lead after two periods.
Marc Cavosie put a tape-to-tape pass on the stick of Conrad Barnes who streaked in and beat McKenna. Soon afterwards, a Steve Munn shot was tipped over the shoulder of McKenna.
In the third period, Jim Lorentz blistered a shot past Marsters with 1:48 remaining to pull the Saints to within one, but the Engineers held on to take the win.
“We’ve been taking little baby steps,” said Engineer head coach Dan Fridgen. “It started when Dartmouth came back against us and then they came back to tie us last weekend.
“Again, we bent but didn’t break. Tonight we held off and did a real good job of staying composed. They were the ones under pressure to come back and we got the job done.
“You have to give them a lot of credit, they outworked us,” said Saints head coach Joe Marsh. “We couldn’t sustain much and we had some good zone time in their end but we just couldn’t get much to the net.”
The Engineers controlled most of the game, from the defensive end to the offensive end.
“That’s what killed us all year,” said Marsh. “It’s just very discouraging. It’s our 12th one-goal loss of the year and I just thought we’d have more jump than that.
“The Muir line [Sean Muir, Mike Muir and Daniels] did a great job and what we should look at is how inspiring they played. I just think it’s important that everyone on our team gets inspired by them. They had the puck almost the entire time in the RPI end and they had some great chances and it’s important for everyone to feed off of them and we didn’t do it tonight.”
Said Fridgen, “We did a good job defensively and did a good job of pinning our men. The forwards did a good job down low of support and whenever we did have a breakdown, Nate was there for us. All five guys made sure they didn’t have any good breakouts.”
The Saints (8-17-0, 6-9-0 ECAC) fall into a four way tie for eighth place in the ECAC with Brown, Princeton and Yale, and will travel to Union on Saturday. The Engineers (11-10-4, 5-7-3) jump from 10th to seventh in the standings and will host Clarkson in the annual Big Red Freakout on Saturday.
