RPI 2023-24: In Our 200th Year, We're Getting It Right

[Ralph Baer]

In honor of Reese Keating, today is 29 August 2023. There are 39 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 7 October 2023 for the start of next season.

[Wicked Slappaahs]

Muzzatti article in T/U: https://www.timesunion.com/sports/ar...orts-spotlight


"...Muzzatti, who turned 20 the day before he was drafted, had enough feedback after talking to teams following the conclusion of RPI’s 2022-23 season that his name would most likely be called as he was joined in Nashville by family members and Engineers coach Dave Smith.

With his draft rights residing with the Predators organization, the 6-foot-6, 240-pound Muzzatti went back to work on his summer program as he seeks to improve on his freshman season that featured seven goals and 22 points in 35 games for the Engineers.

“Just getting started here, there is a lot of college (hockey) to be played, keep developing here at RPI,” Muzzatti said. “When the time comes to go out to Nashville, I make that decision then. For now, I just want to keep getting better....”

[RPI fan 4 life]

I liked the comments from Muzzatti. Sounds like he’s going to be here more than just this season.

[rpi82]

I liked the comments from Muzzatti. Sounds like he’s going to be here more than just this season.

Fifth round picks are far enough down the stack that they rarely leave in less than 3, and often 4, years unless they have a major breakout season. It sounds like Muzzati is smart enough to know that and is focused on working hard to improve his game at the college level. In short, he stays for most or all of his career or he has the kind of year that can really help push our program back toward the top. Either way we win.

Edit: I wrote that using old, pre-portal logic. However, he seems happy where he is so I'm hopeful the above still applies. If he's improving in Troy it makes sense to stay. If he has a monster season it would make sense to go pro.

Edit 2: I'm glad to see someone is out there pitching RPI hockey. It used to be the dominant winter sport program in the CD. Now it's probably Siena hoops first with the two hockey programs splitting the remaining attention. The pandemic response made it worse. We need to win back some in the community and this is a positive step.

[Ralph Baer]

Muzzatti's father, of course, went to college before going to the NHL. I am sure that his father's experiences, whatever they may be, have been influencing and will continue to influence his son.

[rpi82]

Muzzatti's father, of course, went to college before going to the NHL. I am sure that his father's experiences, whatever they may be, have been influencing and will continue to influence his son.

Absolutely. I'll bet Jason, Sutter's dad, is pragmatic about professional careers. I saw him play a number of times as Sean Burke's backup during the last two seasons of the Whalers, which represented about 90% of his NHL career. He was a college All-American and played reasonably well on a couple of struggling teams yet they drafted over him with their first round pick, JS Giguere. He then bounced around to a few other organizations before heading to Europe for about a decade. He knows the tenuous nature of a professional future.

[sezenack]

Unrelated offseason question for some of you to ponder:
Who is the best goalie in RPI's history?

I think I've narrowed it down to 3 names: Puppa, Laing and Little.
Puppa has the national championship, 2nd team All-American, and ECAC Tournament MVP
Laing owns the best SV% in RPI history (min 50 games), 1st team All-ECAC, ECAC goalie of the year, 1st team All-American, and a Hobey finalist
Little had All-Rookie team, 1st team All-ECAC, 2nd team All-American, Hobey finalist

Just on the outside of the conversation (but still excellent goalies who will be remembered)
Kasdorf: 2x 2nd team All-ECAC and the 2nd highest SV% in RPI's history. His accolades are good but not quite there.
It's a similar story for Marsters. Just 1 2nd team All-ECAC (and the All-Rookie team).
York had 1 2nd team All-ECAC and 1 3rd team All-ECAC.
Don Cutts had 2 2nd team All-ECAC and ECAC Rookie of the Year.
Owen Savory was on track to own the best numbers in RPI history. Had already picked up 1 2nd team All-ECAC and the All-Rookie team. He's clearly below everyone else but such a shame that the admin prevented us from seeing him play out his career here.

Anyways, I think it has to be Puppa or Laing. The answer comes down to how much you value regular season success vs postseason success. Laing's regular season accolades and numbers are clearly above Puppa, but Puppa has the national championship and ECAC tourney MVP. I think I'd go with Puppa, but it's close.

[tony/troy]

Unrelated offseason question for some of you to ponder:
Who is the best goalie in RPI's history?

I think I've narrowed it down to 3 names: Puppa, Laing and Little.
Puppa has the national championship, 2nd team All-American, and ECAC Tournament MVP
Laing owns the best SV% in RPI history (min 50 games), 1st team All-ECAC, ECAC goalie of the year, 1st team All-American, and a Hobey finalist
Little had All-Rookie team, 1st team All-ECAC, 2nd team All-American, Hobey finalist

Just on the outside of the conversation (but still excellent goalies who will be remembered)
Kasdorf: 2x 2nd team All-ECAC and the 2nd highest SV% in RPI's history. His accolades are good but not quite there.
It's a similar story for Marsters. Just 1 2nd team All-ECAC (and the All-Rookie team).
York had 1 2nd team All-ECAC and 1 3rd team All-ECAC.
Don Cutts had 2 2nd team All-ECAC and ECAC Rookie of the Year.
Owen Savory was on track to own the best numbers in RPI history. Had already picked up 1 2nd team All-ECAC and the All-Rookie team. He's clearly below everyone else but such a shame that the admin prevented us from seeing him play out his career here.

Anyways, I think it has to be Puppa or Laing. The answer comes down to how much you value regular season success vs postseason success. Laing's regular season accolades and numbers are clearly above Puppa, but Puppa has the national championship and ECAC tourney MVP. I think I'd go with Puppa, but it's close.

Spurious debate with no apples to apples comparisons even remotely possible.

Different generations were wearing different degrees of equipment including pad width and height, size of waffle and catching glove along with level of neck, throat and face protection.

My first three games ever in person were Bill Sack and Dick Mikulec (Sack broke his leg part way through), then Mikulek again as the starter and finally Dick Greenlaw for the first game the following season.

None of these guys were wearing pads that were all that much wider than their legs nor much higher than their knees. The waffles they wore were not much bigger than the waffles you eat. Their catching gloves were almost the equivalent of the gloves todays five year olds show up with for tee ball. Forget all about neck, throat and face protection entirely. All these guys had was a flat Freddie Krueger Friday the 13th mask that was pressed right up against their faces.

And no, they did not stop play whenever one of these guys took one off the "mask" like they do now.

[DavidNardolillo]

Unrelated offseason question for some of you to ponder:
Who is the best goalie in RPI's history?

I think I've narrowed it down to 3 names: Puppa, Laing and Little.
Puppa has the national championship, 2nd team All-American, and ECAC Tournament MVP
Laing owns the best SV% in RPI history (min 50 games), 1st team All-ECAC, ECAC goalie of the year, 1st team All-American, and a Hobey finalist
Little had All-Rookie team, 1st team All-ECAC, 2nd team All-American, Hobey finalist

Just on the outside of the conversation (but still excellent goalies who will be remembered)
Kasdorf: 2x 2nd team All-ECAC and the 2nd highest SV% in RPI's history. His accolades are good but not quite there.
It's a similar story for Marsters. Just 1 2nd team All-ECAC (and the All-Rookie team).
York had 1 2nd team All-ECAC and 1 3rd team All-ECAC.
Don Cutts had 2 2nd team All-ECAC and ECAC Rookie of the Year.
Owen Savory was on track to own the best numbers in RPI history. Had already picked up 1 2nd team All-ECAC and the All-Rookie team. He's clearly below everyone else but such a shame that the admin prevented us from seeing him play out his career here.

Anyways, I think it has to be Puppa or Laing. The answer comes down to how much you value regular season success vs postseason success. Laing's regular season accolades and numbers are clearly above Puppa, but Puppa has the national championship and ECAC tourney MVP. I think I'd go with Puppa, but it's close.

I like the analysis. When you take the pro career into account, it is Puppa by some distance. Laing was a solid professional goaltender, but never got a sustained chance beyond the low levels. Little was the goaltender when I was in high school locally and a personal favorite; he had some absolutely spectacular games for RPI.

Kasdorf's career at RPI was interrupted by a serious shoulder injury. When he was on he was exceptional at controlling shots and not giving up rebounds. RPI had bad luck with the pairwise his last season; would have been interesting if they made it into the NCAA tournament.

Savory was a difference-maker when the program was coming off the bottom, and he was hot at the end of 2020; who knows what would have happened in the playoffs and beyond. He appears to already be out of hockey.

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 30 August 2023. There are 38 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 7 October 2023 for the start of next season.

[Ralph Baer]

Spurious debate with no apples to apples comparisons even remotely possible.

Different generations were wearing different degrees of equipment including pad width and height, size of waffle and catching glove along with level of neck, throat and face protection.

My first three games ever in person were Bill Sack and Dick Mikulec (Sack broke his leg part way through), then Mikulek again as the starter and finally Dick Greenlaw for the first game the following season.

None of these guys were wearing pads that were all that much wider than their legs nor much higher than their knees. The waffles they wore were not much bigger than the waffles you eat. Their catching gloves were almost the equivalent of the gloves todays five year olds show up with for tee ball. Forget all about neck, throat and face protection entirely. All these guys had was a flat Freddie Krueger Friday the 13th mask that was pressed right up against their faces.

And no, they did not stop play whenever one of these guys took one off the "mask" like they do now.

I agree that one can't really compare different eras. I can't really comment upon Sack since his senior year was my freshman year, and I knew little about hockey then. Don Cutts was the best RPI goalie whom I saw when I was in Troy.

[rpi82]

I agree that one can't really compare different eras. I can't really comment upon Sack since his senior year was my freshman year, and I knew little about hockey then. Don Cutts was the best RPI goalie whom I saw when I was in Troy.

Not only did the equipment change (I watched a video of Ken Dryden recently and I swear that his pads were barely bigger than his legs), but goaltending styles changed dramatically. Neil Little is probably my all-time favorite RPI goalie. He played a stand-up style you'd never see today - depending on angles rather than flopping athleticism. I can still picture his making many saves, particularly on guys coming down the wing, by coming out to cut down the angle and taking the shot off his pads without appearing to move much at all. He was also tall so, combined with his stand-up positioning, he was rarely beaten top side. Now goalies immediately go to the butterfly, making them far more effective on low shots to the corners but more susceptible to 5 hole and top corner shots.

Edit: I just looked him up and he was only 6'1". Perhaps because of his stand-up style he seemed taller. He also had a long AHL career and it appeared from limited viewing that he adopted sort of a hybrid style over time.

[DrDemento]

I agree that one can't really compare different eras. I can't really comment upon Sack since his senior year was my freshman year, and I knew little about hockey then. Don Cutts was the best RPI goalie whom I saw when I was in Troy.

My list going way back has to include Cutts and Sack. All the comments made are of course very valid. But comparisons are really hard to make since you also have to take into consideration what our defensive pairs were like in front of each of these goalies. Sometimes I think the I might be able to play goal if I had the defensemen we had in 1985 (just a joke of course). And also, as already mentioned a few times but bears repeating, the game has changed in so many way with equipment changes, style of play, speed and size of the players along with how hard they shoot and not to be overlooked entirely, the advent of the media time out and the obligatory scraping of the ice during periods. Also something to think about is the competition level we played during different eras. When I think about RPI hockey history though, I consider us to be fortunate to have had goal tending as perhaps our strongest position.

[Ralph Baer]

Today is 31 August 2023. There are 37 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 7 October 2023 for the start of next season.

[Ralph Baer]

In honor of Sara Bayne, today is 1 September 2023. There are 36 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 7 October 2023 for the start of next season.