RPIās season began on Friday night with an exhibition victory over Army. They won 5-4 in a game they largely controlled. A hat trick and 4 points from Rullers led the way for an exciting start to the season. After watching the game, here are the notes that I have jotted down (in a pretty random order because I just wrote things down as I was watching).
Forecheck and compete looks a lot better with more speed to get to the spots in a timely manner.
It was definitely more disruptive to Armyās breakouts and caused more turnovers and issues than what we saw last year.
Sloppy defensively, there were lots of breakdowns.
Army was able to get a decent amount of good scoring chances, but most of them felt like miscues and breakdowns by RPI rather than them just beating the defense.
Buckley looks a step faster.
Last year, his shot and skill level allowed him to get top 6 minutes right away, but it felt like his skating was holding him back a bit. He looks a little faster this year, which I think will go a long way for his game. He had a nice goal off the rush to cap RPIās scoring.
Mostly just rolled the lines.
For this exhibition game, RPI rolled out the entire team and rather than distributing the ice time like a normal game, they pretty much just spread out the 5 lines evenly throughout the game. I think this was good to get all the newcomers acclimated.
Krawchuk looks great.
He had a few grade A saves and was moving extremely well. He also was doing a great job tracking the puck. His only goal against was on a pretty good shot and wasnāt a bad one to let up. He looks ready to pickup where he left off last season.
Top line is as advertised.
The top line of Hadland - Rullers - Tapper look just as advertised. They were RPIās most dangerous line and created a few different scoring chances at 5v5. Tapper had the puck on his stick A LOT and looked really good with it. Rullers was all over the place and had a very well-rounded game beyond his obvious counting stats. Hadland didnāt look quite as good as those two and seemed to be adjusting to the pace of the college game, but thatās not unexpected for a freshman and I still liked his game. The three of them also seemed to have pretty good chemistry already.
Gouklerās skating looks incredible.
He is easily the best skater Iāve seen at RPI. Jack Brackett might have been a little faster in straight lines, but Goukler is way more agile and shifty. He lost the puck a lot when he had it due to some good defensive plays and not making quick enough choices with it. That seemed to be another instance of adjusting to the pace of the college game for a freshman, but I expect he will adjust very quickly. Even with some of those turnovers, he created some great chances and once he is acclimated, he is going to create TONS of offense.
Yurchuk is also as advertised.
He looked very skilled with the puck on his stick, and he had some excellent passes to create chances for RPI. The first goal came from a great pass on the power play to give Rullers a tap-in.
McCallum struggled in his first collegiate action.
The first goal was just a really good shot on a breakaway, but the others, I did not really like from him. The second goal against him was bad. It was a normal shot that he should have saved, but he let it squeak through him. The third goal against was a bad rebound that he left hanging right in the crease. Krawchuk was clearly better this game and definitely has the edge right now. Iām not too worried about McCallum and think heāll be totally fine. Itās typical for freshmen to struggle in net in their first action; Krawchuk did that just last year!
The power play was awesome.
You might be saying, āthey had 3 PP goals, duh!!ā However, I think just looking at goals can be misleading sometimes. There can be a lucky bounce, defensive breakdowns, etc. That was not the case here. The power play was consistently dangerous and looked great. They were zipping the puck around quickly and effectively and got a lot of really good looks. The 3 goals were a reward for great puck movement and shots, and the PP looked about as good as it could have.
I was not impressed with Guo this game.
I didnāt think it was a great game defensively for him, and it looked like a couple of the breakdowns were on him. His skating looked good, and he moved the puck well. Itās not like it was all bad; just needs to clean up defensively. Heāll be fine.
In general, I felt a little underwhelmed by the defense corps.
This kinda goes along with the previous point, but with the breakdowns that they had defensively, I thought the defense corps was just okay. I liked the attacking mentality they showed in the offensive zone, and they moved pucks pretty well in transition though.
Hilditch looked improved from last year.
I was pretty impressed with the improvement Hilditch showed. He looked more confident out there, and he was moving really well and played a strong game in his own end in my opinion. He was also a top PKer for the team, and I think he looks capable of cracking the lineup consistently in a key shutdown role.
Slezak looked better than expected.
I was expecting Slezak to struggle this game. Not only is he a freshman, but he also missed all of the last year due to injury. He shattered those expectations those and looked pretty steady! He played a simple game but was effective. In general, I felt good about the depth on defense with Hilditch, Slezak, and Heroux as well having solid games by keeping it simple and playing hard.
Lastly, I wanted to make note of the special teams units since you wonāt see those on a line chart.
PP1
Yurchuk Rullers Tapper
Sobieski Burzynski
Ross replaced Sobieski on this unit for RPIās 2nd PP but then he moved back down.
PP2
Goukler Sitar Gavin
Buckley Klassek
PP3
Scherzer Ross Hadland
Michael Serlin
Guo replaced Michael on this unit for the last PP. Usually thereās only 2 PP units, so I donāt expect they will actually roll 2 out there for the real games.
PK1
Lodewyk Lindberg
Klassek Hilditch
Goukler replaced Lindberg for the 2nd PK.
PK2
Sitar Hadland
Michael Heroux
This unit was only out there for the 1st PK because the 2nd PK ended with a goal pretty quickly. Itās hard to know the full PK personnel right now because there were only 2, and the 2nd one ended very quickly.
Overall, there was lots to build off of this game. The transition game and power play were both awesome, and the team was very disciplined to only give Army two power plays. I also thought they defended well and didnāt allow Army to have much possession.
The main thing to clean up is the defensive breakdowns. Without them, Army would have barely generated any offense, and they canāt afford to do that against Ohio State. Ohio State has the talent to really make them pay. If they get those cleaned up though, this looks like a fun and exciting team, and I think they are for sure capable of beating Ohio State even as a Big Ten team!