Have watched a few of the women’s games on tv and I agree Rampado is a very good goaltender. But I also think this team plays a more cohesive game than past years. Better skating and play 60 minutes and that is being reflected on the scoreboard. Not only in more goals but the games are closer. As an aside, spent last weekend visiting my son in Madison WI. We went to the UW #1 and Ohio State #2 game this weekend. And watched the second game on the BTN. Umm…night and day vs RPI. First off, the women Badgers have their own rink (Remember a couple years ago Barry Melrose made a donation so RPI women could get New Jersey’s?). There were like 2,500 fans in the stands at UW. Tickets were like $5-$10. I checked with someone at the RPI women’s game the same day….like 12 fans he said. I know no outside spectators. But they couldn’t get more than 12 students to go? Even when the tickets are free. Can’t blame that on SAJ.
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RPI 2021-22 Restart
- Thread starter hab
- Start date
Some important points here. Success breeds fan support. When fans go to watch UW, Ohio State, Minny, etc. they know they are watching players who will be wearing their national team colors in future years. RPI has a tremendous hockey history and a very storied history of fan support. But people dont come to games to carry on historical traditions. They come to watch the best. I would love to see RPI, as a proud institution, commit itself to building hockey teams that are among the best. It is not rocket science (and by the way, if you want to study rocket science, you may want to go to RPI), and hopefully the incoming Pres of RPI will see that more clearly than the outgoing.
I wrote about the gender equity report for my column today, so make sure you head to the women's DI page, since it's relevant to some of your points/questions earlier.
Before the report dropped, I'd planned to write about RPI this week, so next week's column will be on the Engineers with quotes from Coach and Laura Severson that I think give some insight on what's "working" this year
Before the report dropped, I'd planned to write about RPI this week, so next week's column will be on the Engineers with quotes from Coach and Laura Severson that I think give some insight on what's "working" this year
It was a very good article up on Ice Garden about the gap in support by the NCAA. Hockey is not unique. The women's basketball programs made national news highlighting what the men got vrs women as well at their respective NCAA tournaments. In terms of fan support at RPI, it is a problem at most schools getting fans to come to women's games. It is harder at a nerd techie school like RPI when less than 1/3rd of the students are women. The band comes but without the community able to attend, I'd imagine the environment can't be that exciting which turns even more students off. Hopefully if the team continues to do well that changes a bit. And agree that the next administration needs to give proper support to all the athletic programs but especially their flagship hockey program.
If Hab is correct and success is what brings the fans out, well I have been a men’s season ticket holder for the past 30 years. Maybe I should have stayed home all that time? I went to some of the women’s’ games last year during an 0 for season and enjoyed myself. And I would be there this year as well despite last year. And I never attended RPI. I guess my point is you either have school spirit or you don’t and if the students and faculty and staff will only go see teams that win, then all this anger at SAJ needs to be spread around a bit.
You are right. Things are not as simple as I stated. RPI women's fan support actually started to build in their first few years as a D1 team and things looked very promising for a culture of strong campus support for the team. I am not talking large crowds, but very enthusiastic crowds of a few hundred and incredible support from the Pep band. Maybe the novelty of having a D1 team wore off a bit, and now just competing is not enough? Don't know the answer, but loyal fans like you keep me hopeful that we will see some excitement in the barn...maybe even this year if the team continues to play the way they have! I think in the team's first or second year as D1, BC (a powerhouse that year) came in and had to fight for a win, and after the game the BC coach commented that it was one of the best atmospheres he had seen in women's hockey. Would be nice to get that back, and more.
Well until the administration allows anyone to attend, and not make it feel like you are going to a prison to attend, I would not expect much hope for a more lively experience. All one can hope is that the new administration understands and values the importance of athletics not just to the RPI student experience, but to keep the school engaged in the community. Right now, it is clear the administration believes the community is diseased. Everyone else has figured this out.
I've seen the women against all of the CT based teams (Yale, QU, UConn and, in the early years, Sacred Heart) and I don't think I've ever seen a crowd over a couple of hundred. When the men come to town we generally have an visitor's turnout greater than that. For the women's games it's generally just handful of alums plus parents of a few of the players, some of whom have come over to say thank you for supporting the team. I must admit, however, that I've only attended a few games in recent years as the team became less competitive. By contrast I think I've only missed one men's game here in CT over the last 15 years - including some where they weren't much more competitive than our recent slump on the women's side.
LeafsFor20
New member
I have played, coached and watched a long time....Vines is not up to this level. He has no clue how of make adjustments and has some of his strongest players sitting on the bench and watching the same players make the same msitakes over and over again. As an active RPI alum, I thought after the last season things might change and evolved, but he is not ready to coach against these teams. Last night he rolled the lines over and over until in was too late...today he waited until there was not enough time to change the flow of the game and Clarkson scored because of predictability and weak zone play by new and weaker players. I was hopeful before this weekend and now I fear he is not able to coach these guys to a playoff spot. His biggest weakest appears to be how to put his best and skilled players in positions to be successful = being a qualified coach.
This is way off the mark! The team played well this weekend and continue to look like a very well coached squad. Sure, they had some lapses but generally pretty disciplined play. And it is very good coaching strategy at this point in the season to roll the lines...it will pay off as the season progresses and this team has pretty balanced lines. Hard to imagine how someone could watch this team and not see progress vs. two years ago
.Not scoring a goal this weekend is cause for concern. It seems the team was a step slower than usual, forecheck not as aggressive and not enough net traffic. Team needs to be get back to that. In terms of the of goal given up, not sure what you saw leaf, but the stat sheet has it as the Wagner line, which includes Severson and the defensive pair was a senior and junior, so was their most experienced players. Getting control of the puck in the defensive zone was an issue all weekend, and then getting it cleared was a very big problem.
LeafsFor20
New member
Not criticizing the goal against....I am criticizing the lack of adjustment and rolling the same lines...at home and trying to change something in order to generate sustained scoring is hockey 101....0 goals is very reminiscent of 2 years ago. The fact is we have better players this year and that can hide quite a bit...look at our play against Providence and weaker opponents this weekend we look less prepared and lacking in desperation.
What adjustments on the lines would you have made? This team scores goals off of energy not really skill or athleticism. The adjustments made this weekend seemed to be to play more sound in their zone so Rampado does not have to be the hero every game. This largely worked as the shot counts were down quite a bit. But this came at the expense it seems of not being aggressive enough in the offensive zone. This team seems to need to take more risks to generate offensive, even if it means giving up more shots and rely on the elite Rampado to make the save when the team needs it.
The last 2 periods of the Qpac game the team finally got back to basics and were very competitive. This is a dump and chase team who needs to use their speed and grit to create chances. That is how they won their games before. When this team tries to carry the puck in, or make the extra pass, it is basically a turn over. That is fine and the team needs to be who they are. If they can just keep it simple going forward, they will get back to their winning ways.
guess who's back, back again, bad krach predictions are back, tell a friend:
Things are a bit sloppy right now with the inclusion of fractional points in the standings so I don't have the point vs. position break downs like I did in the past, but I will likely get those up and running some time before the end of the season. Short summary is that we're sitting at roughly 60/40 to miss the playoffs right now. There's a serious gap between 3rd-6th and 7th-9th so if this holds, we will likely be in a dogfight for points with SLU and Dartmouth all season, while we try and fight off Cornell and Brown coming from behind. Failing to earn points in that SLU home game will likely be a needle in our side moving forward.
Code:
| KRACH | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 |Avg Rk |AvgPts
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pr | 968.1 | 57.6 26.8 9.6 4.0 1.6 0.5 0.0 0.0 x x x x | 1.67 | 52.94
Qu | 697.6 | 30.8 37.1 17.1 8.7 4.4 1.7 0.1 0.0 0.0 x x x | 2.24 | 50.32
Cg | 446.6 | 5.6 14.7 25.3 22.7 18.3 11.9 1.3 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 x | 3.75 | 44.60
Ck | 285.0 | 2.9 9.0 18.2 21.8 23.4 21.1 3.0 0.5 0.1 0.0 0.0 x | 4.32 | 42.65
Ha | 455.9 | 2.2 7.7 17.0 23.2 25.1 21.7 2.6 0.4 0.1 0.0 0.0 x | 4.39 | 42.41
Ya | 337.3 | 0.9 4.6 12.8 19.0 24.7 30.9 5.6 1.3 0.2 0.0 0.0 x | 4.85 | 40.77
Da | 118.5 | 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.3 1.3 6.2 40.7 29.5 17.0 4.2 0.8 0.0 | 7.69 | 28.56
SL | 105.3 | 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2 1.0 4.4 29.4 34.7 21.7 6.8 1.7 0.1 | 7.98 | 27.30
RP | 97.8 | x 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 1.6 15.1 25.6 37.5 15.0 4.8 0.2 | 8.63 | 24.44
Cr | 46.5 | x x x 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.2 4.3 12.7 37.8 36.1 7.8 | 10.27 | 17.10
Br | 39.2 | x x x 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 3.5 10.5 33.0 41.7 10.2 | 10.41 | 16.36
Un | 17.1 | x x x x x x 0.0 0.0 0.2 3.2 14.8 81.8 | 11.78 | 8.53Things are a bit sloppy right now with the inclusion of fractional points in the standings so I don't have the point vs. position break downs like I did in the past, but I will likely get those up and running some time before the end of the season. Short summary is that we're sitting at roughly 60/40 to miss the playoffs right now. There's a serious gap between 3rd-6th and 7th-9th so if this holds, we will likely be in a dogfight for points with SLU and Dartmouth all season, while we try and fight off Cornell and Brown coming from behind. Failing to earn points in that SLU home game will likely be a needle in our side moving forward.
There is a ton of parity in the ECAC. Union, even though 0-5, have been very competitive these past few weeks. Not sure how much we can really get out of statistical analysis at this time.
With that said, yes, I would agree the battle to be out of the bottom 4 would include Union, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell (what happened there?), RPI, SLU. I would even put Yale at risk given how their play has varied from week to week. Only safe to NOT be in the bottom 4 is Colgate, Harvard, Princeton, Clarkson, Qpac. Makes for an exciting season.
In terms of what is success for RPI - if they can be out of the bottom 4, and win their remaining non-conf games (Post, 2xSt Cloud, 2x Merrimack), I think everyone would conclude it was a monster success this year given how low expectations were.
With that said, yes, I would agree the battle to be out of the bottom 4 would include Union, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell (what happened there?), RPI, SLU. I would even put Yale at risk given how their play has varied from week to week. Only safe to NOT be in the bottom 4 is Colgate, Harvard, Princeton, Clarkson, Qpac. Makes for an exciting season.
In terms of what is success for RPI - if they can be out of the bottom 4, and win their remaining non-conf games (Post, 2xSt Cloud, 2x Merrimack), I think everyone would conclude it was a monster success this year given how low expectations were.
As usual, Cornholio summarizes things well. I do think that you need to assume that Yale will rise above the crowd, based on the last weekend, but otherwise it is so hard to predict. Ther are no doormats in this conference any more and that makes every game important.