Preview: RPI vs Union/Guelph (EXH)
The Engineers begin their 2023-24 campaign with back-to-back exhibitions
Hockey is back! This weekend, RPI returns to the ice on Saturday and Sunday. They’ve got a familiar foe up first in Union, and then, they’ll take on the University of Guelph the next day with the more classic Canadian school exhibition. The NCAA allowing exhibitions against other D1 schools last year was a great change because it allows the team to simulate a normal weekend series whereas they could only have the Canadian exhibition in the past.
Starting with Union on Saturday, I honestly would have preferred to see someone other than Union here. They already have 3 games a year against the Garnet Chargers (hehe), so it just would have been nice to play a different ECAC team or even a Hockey East team. Union is a good team to start with though in terms of type of team. They are projected to finish near each other in the preseason poll (even if my model disagreed), and this is a game you expect the Engineers to win. On Sunday, Guelph probably won’t be any different than your typical Canadian team.
I wrote this last year for the exhibition previews, and rather than just repeating myself with different wording, I’m just going to paste it here because it all still applies.
It’s important to not overreact to these games and to evaluate them for what they are worth. The way you should watch exhibition games should have nothing to do with the scoreboard. It is much more about how individual players fair. You can evaluate how they appear to have progressed since last season, or in the case of newcomers, you get acclimated to their play style and get to see how ready they are to make an immediate impact.
The advantage of having two exhibitions is that all the players will get more opportunities. Normally, there’d be two lineups that each play half the game with some players in both lineups, and it was always weird for the second half players to have to jump into the middle of a game. This time, all the players will get a full game at minimum, and some players will get two full games, which is a win-win for the team and the fans.
How the team does as a whole is important too, but I wouldn’t be using the scoreboard to judge that. It’s much more about the process. How well do they possess the puck? Are they generating scoring chances? How’s their transition game? These are the main team-wide themes that I’ll be focusing on as I watch. Wins in these games would simply be gravy on top.
Roster and Lineup
Every single player will play in these games, and there aren’t really going to be set lines either. Players will likely move around in the lineup because the idea of these games is to shake off rust and get your feet wet before the team plays games that count.
I’m not going to post a traditional lineup because of that, but I will post the roster and the game scores.
Returning Players
Just a reminder that the game scores are all low due to the play-driving metrics from last season. I would expect those to be better this season!
This also shows how effective the incoming transfers were last season and how they should be able to make great impacts for the Engineers.
Incoming Players
Here’s the list of incoming players and their projected game scores. This assumes they have the average play driving ability. I’d love to have a model to predict that, but that’s not something I’ve made yet.
This will be a fun weekend to watch RPI with low stakes before the real games get going next Thursday. We’ll have some real previews then. But for this weekend, as always, Let’s Go Red!