After a thrilling shootout victory over Roger Williams University, Marist club hockey headed to Troy, NY to take on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers.
Marist hoped to turn a new page after breaking a four-game losing streak in the previous match and aimed to pull off an upset over a tough RPI squad. Instead, they ended up on the wrong side of a 5-1 routing where they looked a step behind the entire night. With this loss, the Red Foxes have now lost five out of their last six matches.
Marist’s offense looked sloppy, constantly missing passes on offensive opportunities and not getting quality shots on the net while failing to get into a rhythm all game. They made it easy for RPI to stop them and consistently disrupt any forms of momentum they looked like they could find.
The defense wasn’t any better, giving up odd-man rush after odd-man rush and getting lost when covering their assignments, leaving goaltender Anthony Russo out to dry on too many occasions. Russo had to bail out the Red Foxes on multiple occasions, but RPI’s offensive attack proved too much for him to handle alone. The special teams had their fair share of struggles as well, giving up a powerplay goal and not being able to crack RPI’s experienced penalty kill that’s given many teams problems.
RPI was a step ahead the whole night. While they started off slowly, they rattled off three first-period goals and took off from there. They trapped Marist in their own zone for long periods throughout the game and shut down any forms of structured play that the Red Foxes tried to set up. Their dominance was a collective team effort on both ends of the ice.
RPI goaltender Blake Ittelson was nails in his first start of the season. While it wasn’t a relatively tough game for him, he showed up when he needed to. His defensemen slowed the game down for him, allowing him to stand tall and help the Engineers cruise to victory
Both teams got off to a slow start in the first period, with not much action happening and good defense being played. The momentum shifted when Marist freshman defenseman MingWen Shen took a roughing penalty, and RPI’s captain Anton Safonov scored on a cross-ice pass from Brendan Ma, catching Russo off-guard. The Engineers went on to add two more first-period goals and RPI began to lay down the hammer from there, adding two more goals and picking up their play heavily.
The second period saw RPI begin to dominate even further. They forced multiple mistakes on the Red Foxes and took advantage of them still not adjusting to the pace of play. They took a couple of penalties, but their stout penalty kill wouldn’t budge and stifled the Foxes, even creating shorthanded opportunities for themselves. The Red Foxes continued to look sluggish, struggling to complete passes and getting outmuscled by RPI defenders when moving to the net. RPI added on a fourth goal with Alek Gabaret finding a rebounded puck off Russo’s pads and jamming the puck in to put the game even more out of reach.
The third period was more of the same. Marist could not convert on a 5-on-3 to begin, still looking out of touch. RPI put the final nail in the coffin with a fifth goal coming off of another odd-man rush given up by Marist. Sophomore forward Zachary Taylor added one goal for the Foxes with just under five minutes to go, but that did not stop RPI from cruising to a relatively easy victory.
On the road ahead, Marist seeks to defend home ice against Siena in the second leg of the Route 87 Cup. With their bitter rivals coming to town Sunday at 2 p.m. and with bragging rights on the line, Marist must clean up mistakes to end their slump.
Edited by Luke Sassa
Graphic and photo by Kira Crutcher
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