TROY, N.Y. – For the season straight year, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) men's hockey team will play host to the Yale University Bulldogs in the opening round of the ECAC Men's Hockey Championships at the Houston Field House. The seventh-seeded Engineers, who finished the season with a 14-19-1 overall record, and a 9-13 mark in conference play, face the No. 10 seed Bulldogs, who are 7-18-4 overall and 6-14-2 in league play, Saturday night at 7 p.m.
Tickets for the game are currently on sale at the Houston Field House box office at 518-276-6262 or boxoffice@rpi.edu. You can also purchase online at the link provided or by visiting the
RPI Office Of Alumni Relations page.
Rensselaer, which is led by fifth-year head coach
Dave Smith, is currently among the best teams in ECAC Hockey on the power play, ranking third in the league in team power play goals (26). The Engineers collect 2.4 goals per game and 25.6 shots per game during the regular season, while opponents averaged 3.3 goals and 29.1 shots per game.
Senior
Ryan Mahshie was named a Hobey Baker Award nominee earlier this season. The Stoney Creek, Ontario native has collected 21 points on team-high 14 goals and seven assists. Mahshie ranks seventh in ECAC Hockey in goals per game (0.47), which also places him 33
rd nationally.
The Hockey Commissioners Association announced their watch list for the 2023 Tim Taylor Award, annually given to the most outstanding first year player in NCAA Division I men's college hockey. RPI freshman
Sutter Muzzatti (Okemos, MI / Austin Bruins) has been chosen as one of six players to represent ECAC Hockey on the initial watch list. Muzzatti sits tied for second for points on the team with Mahshie, scoring seven goals with 14 assists.
Despite missing some time, junior
Jakob Lee (Owen Sound, ON / Merrimack) leads the team in total points (22) on the season. Lee has scored 10 goals with 12 assists, one of just two players on the team to reach double digits in both categories (
Austin Heidemann, 20 points – 10 goals, 10 assists). Lee has two multi-goal games this season, scoring a pair against Colgate (January 6) and in the last matchup with Yale (February 11).
Both
Mason Klee and
John Beaton earned academic honors from ECAC Hockey in recent weeks, as Klee was named a nominee for the Men's Scholar Athlete Award, while Beaton was selected as a nominee for the inaugural Wayne Dean Sportsmanship award.
A junior, Beaton has put up a 3.80 GPA as a Business & Management major. Beaton has taken care of things in the classroom, scoring an ECAC Hockey All-Academic and AHCA All-American Scholar award. On the ice, Beaton has scored two goals and six assists for eight points. A Business and Management major, Klee holds a 3.78 GPA. Klee was also selected as an AHCA All-American Scholar last season and is a three-time ECAC Hockey All-Academic selection.
Rensselaer's two regular season games against Yale were played on January 13, a 4-1 loss in New Haven, and on February 11 with a 4-2 RPI victory in the 45
th annual Big Red Freakout. Since that matchup, both sides finished the season 2-2.
The last postseason meeting between the two programs came back in 2019, when the Blldogs swept a three-game series with two wins in New Haven. The Bulldogs won 4-1 in the opening game March 8, 2019 before winning the next night, March 9, by a 4-0 final. The Engineers are 0-4-1 in postseason play against Yale all-time.
With a win on Saturday, the Engineers will advance to the quarterfinal round of the 2023 ECAC Hockey Playoffs in a best-of-three series next weekend. The Engineers will face either Harvard, Cornell, or St. Lawrence in the next round.
