Preview: RPI at Clarkson
RPI starts out its North Country trip with the classic rival
RPI continues its ECAC schedule this week by heading north for what is always a tough weekend with Clarkson and SLU. Against Clarkson, that shouldn’t be any different. While they are out to a mediocre start record-wise, they have played some good teams similar to RPI.
Clarkson Team Outlook
Clarkson, like RPI, has been struggling offensively to start the season. They’re only scoring 2.1 goals per game through 7 games despite the abundance of talent on the roster. It’s not like they have been unlucky either. They’re only generating 22.7 shots on goal per game. They’re shooting 9.4%, which is close to average, so overall, they just have not been playing well enough offensively. It’s worth noting that Clarkson has had many injuries at forward, which have certainly hurt their offense.
As you would expect though, the defense has been good to start the year to the tune of 2.71 goals against per game. The goaltending has been average, but you only need average goaltending with the defensive play of Clarkson. They are allowing only 27.1 shots on goal per game.
Biggest Threats
Here’s their lineup against Michigan Tech 2 weeks ago. They were off last week.
Leading scorer, #29 Anthony Romano (C) was out for this game, and he currently leads Clarkson with 6 points in 6 games. With the bye week last week, I would think he’s back in the lineup against RPI.
Their other best two forwards #15 Ayrton Martino (W) and #13 Mathieu Gosselin (C) have both missed significant time so far this season. Martino has only played 4/7 games, while Gosselin has only played 3 games. They are likely still getting up to speed since they have only 6 points combined between the two of them.
Providence transfer #20 Cody Monds (W) and sophomore #28 Ryan Taylor (W) have both produced as secondary scoring options with 4 points a piece, but after that, there’s a huge drop off. #16 Daimon Gardner (W), #17 Jesse Tucker (C), and #39 Eric Ciccolini (W) have 5 points combined in 20 games played. They were all expected to be key contributors in the top 9 and all are vastly underperforming. Clarkson needs them to get going along with Martino and Gosselin getting healthy and playing better to truly hit its ceiling.
Additionally, top defenseman #18 Noah Beck (LD) has only 2 points in 7 games to start the year after combining for 45 the past 2 years. They also need and expect much more for him.
In net, #33 Austin Roden and #1 Emmett Croteau have split time with Roden starting 5 games and Croteau starting 2. Both have been solid to start. Roden has a 0.908 SV%, and Croteau has a 0.913 SV%. I thought in the preseason Croteau would wind up winning the job, and I’m sticking with that. For now though, it appears Roden has the slight edge based on their number of starts.
Summary
Clarkson is loaded on paper but has struggled on the ice in comparison due to injuries and some tougher opponents. The week off likely allowed them to get healthy meaning RPI will probably see them at full strength, which Clarkson has not had yet this year. I’d expect the Engineers to see a better team than what Clarkson has shown so far.
Even with Clarkson likely healthy, not all hope is lost though. The healthy players on the team have still struggled a bit, and it could take the team some time to get going at full strength now. It wouldn’t be realistic to expect Clarkson to put it all together and start scoring at will now when a lot of their team has struggled.
I expect goals to be at a premium in this one, so both teams will need to make them count. With the way Clarkson defends, I think RPI needs to get on the board early to win this one. They will have much more of a chance if they can play with the lead. That was how they beat Clarkson at Cheel in January of 2020, and that’s probably what they need again.
Let’s Go Red!!