Union advances to RPI Tournament championship game with shootout win

After a scoreless 65 minutes Mario Valery-Trabucco scored the only goal of the shootout to send the Dutchmen to the championship game where they will face the winner of the RPI-Bentley game. Freshman goaltender Keith Kinkaid made 30 saves for his first career shutout, along with stopping all three of Lake State's shooters in the shootout. The game will officially go down as a tie. LSSU's Kyle Haynes had a great opportunity to win the game for the Lakers with under one minutes left in overtime, but whiffed on his shot with an open net.

Even though I was not at the game (I'm enjoying my winter break at home), I did get to listen to the majority of the game on the radio. From what I can tell it was a pretty unexciting and sluggish game even though each team had a combined 60 shots on net. But, you have to be happy with the way Kinkaid played (it looks like most of you got what you wanted in goal), and advancing to the championship game. Hopefully this will repeat scenario of what happened in last year's Governor's Cup where Union advanced to the championship game with a shootout victory over RPI, and then won the tournament with a win over Colgate. Personally, I'd like to see RPI win tonight because Union-RPI games are always fun and it would be a stronger test for the Dutchmen considering RPI is better than Bentley on paper.

For those who haven't heard or didn't notice during the game senior captains Jason Walters and Andrew Buote did not dress tonight due to team violations. Supposedly more players violated the rule and will not play tomorrow. I haven't heard any word on what the infraction was. It is interesting that both of the players who sat out tonight were senior captains. Maybe Wakita, Schreiber, Matheson, and/or Presizniuk will be out tomorrow.

If RPI wins the Dutchmen will play at 7pm tomorrow, but if Bentley wins they will play for the championship at 4pm.

Here's the game recap from UnionAthletics.com:
http://www.unionathletics.com/news/2009/11/27/MICE_1127093453.aspx

Here's video of the shooout along with post-game interviews:
http://www.dailygazette.com/videos/2009/nov/27/319/

Looking into the RPI Tournament

The Dutchmen come into the tournament having swept the weekend in the North Country for the first time since 2002-03 two weeks ago and having just finished their finals, so the team should be very refreshed and have no academic distractions. Union will face Lake Superior State in the first round on Friday at 4pm. This will be the first meeting between the two programs. Depending on the outcome against the Lakers the Dutchmen will either face RPI or Bentley. The Dutchmen have gone unbeaten in their past five outings at the Houston Field House dating back to November 2004.

LSSU (6-7-1 overall, 3-6-1-0 CCHA) currently sits in 8th place in the CCHA, which is only 2 points out from last place. Offensively the Lakers are 8th in the league averaging 2.64 goals per game. The offense is led by junior forward Chad Nehring (8-3-11), junior forward Rick Schofield (5-6-11), and senior forward Zac MacVoy (2-9-11). Nehring leads the team with 5 power-play goals, which is also tied for tops in the CCHA. Junior Brian Mahoney-Wilson has started in goal for the Lakers in 13 of their 14 games and has posted a 6-6-1 record with a 2.79 GAA and .911 save percentage. The Lakers have been a team of streaks this year. They won 5 of their first 6 games to start the season, but then went on to go 6 games without a win. In their past three games they have won two games having beat Nebraska-Omaha on the 14th and then split a weekend series with Alaska-Fairbanks last weekend. Last year LSSU went 2-1 against ECAC opponents beating Harvard 6-2 and then splitting games with Colgate as they lost 5-4 and then won 6-1. The Lakers have won the NCAA championship 3 times (1988, 1992, 1994) and were the runners up in 1993.

Here's a link to a preview for the tournament from UnionAthletics.com:
http://www.unionathletics.com/news/2009/11/23/MICE_1123094548.aspx