Kirk MacDonald and Rensselaer finally broke the tie against Connecticut. <\/p>\n
MacDonald scored his first two goals of the season, powering the Engineers to a 4-1 nonconference victory Saturday over the Huskies before a crowd of 4,523 in their Houston Field House opener. <\/p>\n
In winning their first game of the season, the Engineers (1-1-1) snapped their frustration with the pesky Huskies (0-2-1). The last two meetings have ended in ties — 4-4 in last year’s home opener, and 3-3 in Sunday’s consolation game of the Mutual of Omaha Stampede in Omaha, Neb.<\/p>\n
“They play us really, really hard,” RPI coach Dan Fridgen said. “They have a team that doesn’t quit. We had a D-zone breakdown where we threw it up the middle of the ice, and they capitalized on it. Otherwise, I thought we played real well.” <\/p>\n
The Engineers dominated the first period, outshooting the Huskies, 18-5, and keeping the puck in the UConn zone during their entire first power-play attempt. MacDonald missed on two golden scoring chances against goalie Brad Smith. <\/p>\n
“The first one, I shot right through the crease,” MacDonald said. “I couldn’t believe I missed that one. I was pushing real hard to score. Maybe I was holding the stick a little too tight.” <\/p>\n
MacDonald finally solved Smith on RPI’s third power play of the first, when he tipped in Matt McNeely’s right-point wrister at 12:31. <\/p>\n
“That took a little weight off my shoulders,” MacDonald said.<\/p>\n
The lead didn’t last long. Mike Neilon put a shot over goalie Jordan Alford’s right shoulder from in front of the net 2:10 later. <\/p>\n
RPI snapped the tie with 39.5 seconds left in the second period. With the power-play unit still on the ice after Neilon finished serving a hooking penalty, a Kevin Croxton left-point shot deflected to the right side of the net. Brad Farynuk was there, and the junior defenseman put it past Smith.<\/p>\n
MacDonald made it 3-1 4:28 into the third when his shot from along the left-wing corner hit Smith’s catching glove and went into the net. <\/p>\n
“The coaches keep telling me to shoot the puck all the time,” MacDonald said. “I just got it from Brad [Farynuk], and a seam kind of opened up, so I just fired it. I don’t think their goalie was real ready for the shot from a weird angle.” <\/p>\n
Ken Schott covers college hockey for<\/i> The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, N.Y.<\/i> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kirk MacDonald and Rensselaer finally broke the tie against Connecticut. MacDonald scored his first two goals of the season, powering the Engineers to a 4-1 nonconference victory Saturday over the Huskies before a crowd of 4,523 in their Houston Field House opener. In winning their first game of the season, the Engineers (1-1-1) snapped their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5450"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}