Friday, October 24, 2014

Dust or Gold

Yeah, we didn't have anything this week, unfortunately. Gotta struggle for the legal tender sometimes.

But here's the gist of what would have been said anyway - wait a few weeks before you panic on the Engineers.

Minnesota and Denver are two of the best defenses in the country. It's too early to use stats to back this up, because 50% of Minnesota and 100% of Denver stats come from games against RPI, but coming into the season, that was part of the expectation on both teams. They'd do a pretty good job of keeping the puck out of the net.

Add a team that knew coming in that it had to find ways to score goals, and it's a recipe for the way the last three games played out - although to be very fair, the Engineers were awful on Saturday in Denver.

That said, the defense looks very good. Observers of the Minnesota game and the first Denver game saw a lot to like in Jason Kasdorf's play. But the goals have to come. Hopefully, that starts tonight against the first team in the RPI schedule that they should be favored to beat.

The rationale is that when you play difficult teams, it makes other teams feel a little easier by comparison. For years and years, though, we've become used to seeing RPI teams play at the level of their opponent no matter what, rarely a metric for success, especially against weaker teams.

If the RPI offense treats Bentley's defense as though it were Denver's, they'll find their opportunities to score, That can be nothing but helpful moving forward. If they don't... settle in, this one could be a long one.

Speaking of long ones, the RPI women had a lead last week for all of three-and-a-half minutes. It's a start, but it's still 15 games in a row without a win. Two more chances to snap that schneid starting tomorrow at home against UConn in the first full home weekend.

Get yourself to the Field House all weekend long, hockey has come home.

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