Preview: RPI vs Quinnipiac/Princeton
The Engineers look to keep up their positive momentum after a sweep
This weekend, RPI concludes the first half of their season with another ECAC series. This time they will host Quinnipiac and Princeton.
Quinnipiac
Prior to the season, I pegged Quinnipiac as a national championship contender. So far, they’ve looked the part… mostly. Quinnipiac has been inconsistent this season, but they’re still a top team in the country.
Like a typical Quinnipiac team, they are dominant at controlling the puck with some of the best puck possession metrics in the country. They are also elite at winning the scoring chance battle. They generate tons of offense and chances and are excellent at defending the high danger areas.
The main issue with Quinnipiac is their inconsistency. At their best, they look like they can win a national championship with dominant wins against BU and BC. At their worst though, they have played down to the level of some of their weaker opponents with confusing losses to Yale, Alaska, and Merrimack.
Some of the inconsistency is tied to finishing and goaltending. Despite generating a multitude of chances pretty consistently in their games, they have not finished those chances as well as you would expect. Additionally, both Dylan Silverstein and Matej Marinov have struggled in net, with both below a 0.900 SV% on the season.
Given their firepower offensively, they have lots of big threats. Ethan Wyttenbach leads the team in points with 22 as just a freshman. He has been outstanding from the jump for them. Chris Pelosi leads the team in goals with 10 his sophomore season. Markus Vidicek, Mason Marcellus, Jeremy Wilmer, Aaron Schwartz, and Antonin Verreault are all other forwards already in the double digits in points to give Quinnipiac some major scoring depth.
Princeton
Princeton has been pretty solid to start the year, albeit with a pretty weak schedule. They’ve actually scored pretty well with very hot starts from upperclassmen Kai Daniells and Brendan Gorman, and they’ve done a good job controlling play and protecting their net front.
It’s a little hard to draw too many conclusions about Princeton since they are still so early on in their season. The goaltending has been struggling with all 3 netminders seeing time, and none of them have really taken control in the net. Their biggest threats outside of Daniells and Gorman are Jake Manfre, Jaxson Ezman and David Jacobs, who is averaging a whopping 23 minutes of ice time a night, crazy numbers for a forward. Kai Greaves has been great on the back end with 6 points in 9 games as their primary offensive defenseman.
One last noteworthy area for Princeton is their special teams have been weak thus far this season. The power play is operating at 12.4% while the penalty kill is at 72.2%. This is an area RPI needs to take advantage of since they have been doing much better on special teams recently, and Princeton has been pretty solid at even strength.
Let’s Go Red!!