Box Score
TROY, N.Y. - It was freshman night at Houston Field House as rookie Matt Angers-Goulet scored two goals and classmate Mathias Lange stopped 28 of 29 shots as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) hung on for a 2-1 victory over Yale before 2,932 in men’s hockey action.
The two teams entered the night tied for seventh place in the ECAC Hockey League standings, so the Engineers (12-14-4, 6-7-4) move to 16 points while Yale (8-13-3, 6-9-2) stays at 14 and remains in seventh.
The Engineers took advantage of their first power play to grab a 1-0 lead and erase the memories of the 5-0 Yale shutout at New Haven three weeks earlier. Angers-Goulet got his third goal of the season when he banged home a rebound on the edge of the crease at 6:24 of the first period.
RPI had the only goal of the first frame and dominated play despite only having a 6-3 advantage in shots on target.
The Bulldogs outshot the Engineers 15-8 in the middle frame, but it was the same story otherwise. Many of Lange’s 15 saves were of high caliber, including a stop of a one-timer by Jean-Francois Boucher from point-blank range on the power play.
The home team tallied again with the man-advantage on another Angers-Goulet score 2:20 into the second. Chris Hussey’s short crossing pass in the low slot was one-timed by the rookie center for his fourth tally of the year and his first multiple-goal outing. Alec Richards, who made a number of quality saves in the period, had some traffic in front of him and the conversion of the pass was too quick for him to recover in time.
With Yale looking to convert its first power play on the fifth chance, Boucher was served a five-minute major for charging at 2:57 that resulted in a 3:30 advantage. With 2:28 left on the penalty kill, Brennan Turner went off for an interference call that gave the home team a 5-on-3 situation. The Bulldogs needed Richards, who had his only collegiate shutout against RPI, to come up big to stay in the game. The rookie came through with two stops and a successful kill.
Yale killed off six of eight power-play opportunities and outshot RPI 29-24 but could not stay out of the penalty box enough to support a fine, 22-save performance by freshman netminder Richards. Yale could not convert on its five power plays.
