Men's Hockey Drops League Game to RPI

Saturday, January 22

Troy, N.Y.

4:00 PM

Dartmouth College

Rensselaer

1/22/2011 6:25:00 PM | Men's Ice Hockey

By: Dartmouth

TROY, N.Y. – The #18 Dartmouth men's hockey team got in a hole early against #13/#14 Rensselaer on Saturday afternoon in Houston Field House as the Engineers took a 5-1 victory and earned two valuable league points.

Rensselaer (15-6-3, 7-5-0 ECAC) jumped on the board early in the first period when two staight shots on net left the puck out front for Joel Malchuk who got two pokes in before finally sneaking it past goalie James Mello (Rehoboth, Mass.) for the game's opening goal.

Dartmouth (11-6-2, 7-4-1 ECAC) had several opportunities as RPI was whistled for three penalties, but the Big Green's sixth-ranked power play unit was unable to capitalize as the visitors went into the first break down for just the sixth time this season.

Rensselaer buzzed around the Dartmouth net for most of the second period and even managed to get more short handed shots then the Big Green did on its own power play opportunity. The ECAC's second leading scorer, Chase Polacek made Dartmouth pay with a laser of a shot from the right side of the net as the Engineers capitalized on its third power play chance of the contest to put the home team up, 2-0.

"We definitely had a not so good night," said head coach Bob Gaudet. "And it wasn't so much as what we were doing, as what RPI was doing. They're a good team and once they took that 2-0 lead, they got us off our game."

The Engineers really broke the game open late in the frame off a second power play strike. Brock Higgs slammed the puck behind Mello and then less then two minutes later Alex Angers-Goulet shot over the Big Green goalie on his glove side to give Rensselaer its biggest lead of the game, 4-0.

After having just one penalty in the first period, Dartmouth was whistled for four in the second as RPI capitalized on two of those chances.

Eric Robinson (Foxboro, Mass.) got the Big Green in the scoring column early in the final period of play. Evan Stephens (Bessemer, Mich.) put the puck down low from the blue line with Doug Jones (Marietta, Ga.) stopping it in front of the Rensselaer net. Jones spun around and got the puck to Robinson who finally was able to sneak one past RPI goalie, Allen York.

A fifth goal by the home team took advantage of an out-of-position Jody O'Neill (Nepean, Ont.) in net as the Engineers tallied their second most goals in a game this season.

Mello and O'Neill combined for 24 saves while York had 18 for RPI.

Dartmouth will be back in action next weekend when Cornell and Colgate travel to Hanover. Game time on both Friday and Saturday will be 7 p.m.