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RPI 2025 Off-Season: HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ralph Baer said:
We will now hear from DrD about RPI vs Clarkson and his first wife going into labor. :D

Great post, Tom. I also have little idea as to what class most are in, what numbers they wear, and what most look like.
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No need to rehash old memories for now. Really great though to hear from Tom who has been very much missed here. Hope he can find the time to follow and post a bit again.
 
Greetings from the frozen four. Every single person I have talked to says Lang will do wonders for the RPI program. I always look at things in the context of what I see on the ice. I don’t care how many stars we have on the team. If they can play like Western Michigan did last night: aggressive forecheck, great back checking, and being very disciplined , they will win a lot of games.
 
25+years said:
Greetings from the frozen four. Every single person I have talked to says Lang will do wonders for the RPI program. I always look at things in the context of what I see on the ice. I don’t care how many stars we have on the team. If they can play like Western Michigan did last night: aggressive forecheck, great back checking, and being very disciplined , they will win a lot of game
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Should I buy tickets to the Frozen Four here in DC in 2027? ;)
 
All this optimism and interest in the coaching change got me down a rabbit hole of reliving the glory days (and the dream of perhaps returning to them). I had consumed plenty of info over the years about the '85 championship, which was during my lifetime and not long before I matriculated, but I knew almost nothing about the '54 championship.

The '54 championship was even more improbable than '85! We were the #2 seed from the east (BC #1), when the tournament was 2 west teams versus 2 east teams. First up was Minnesota (#2W) versus BC and the Gophers won in a rout 14-1. There was a definite attitude that eastern teams could not compete with western teams and the Minn-BC result ratified that to the point that the RPI-Michigan outcome was a foregone conclusion. But then we played #1W Michigan, who was the three-time defending champ, and won 6-4 in a game we never trailed. Playing Minnesota the next night, RPI trailed late 4-3 but managed the equalizer to send the game to OT. Overtime lasted less than 2 minutes before RPI scored again to win the championship. Michigan played BC in the consolation game and won 7-2. Suffice to say it was not a good tournament for BC and set a couple of ignominious records for score differential that I believe still stand.

In both games RPI jumped out to 3-0 leads and in both games the opponent rallied to tie, with Minnesota actually taking the lead at one point. And yet RPI managed to reverse the momentum back in their favor and dispatch them both. Speaks pretty well to Ned Harkness's coaching I'd say! Abbie Moore was named MVP but RPI goalie Bob Fox could easily have won it. Minnesota outshot RPI 20-5 in the 3rd period of their game but he kept them in it so one of those 5 shots was able to tie the game up.

Minnesota coach Mariucci was quoted after the loss saying the team was geared up to take on Michigan and didn't bring the same gusto they would have against them. He also said they'd beat RPI more often than they'd lose to them if they played them regularly. Maybe so, coach, but on the day it counted - it was the Bachelors (to become the Engineers again in '58) who prevailed.
 
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realet said:
Seems like a decent time to poke my head in and say hello.

Very happy to see Lang come to Troy. I expect big things from him and while it didn't take me long to warm to Appert, this is the first hiring in my living memory that I feel very good about from the beginning. I was pretty young when Fridgen was chosen to replace Buddy Powers (the first coach I actually remember seeing), was initially bummed that Andy Murray turned us down and that we ended up with our second choice, and I will go to my grave upset about the way Appert's replacement was chosen (and I don't need to elaborate here). I tried to give the administration the benefit of the doubt that Smith gave them the blueprint for making things work quickly, but even in the COVID season it never really felt like the team was taking broad steps beyond mediocrity. I used to write about inflection points and that was not a good one. (The administration quickly served up two more bad ones on top of that in 2020 and 2021.)

I penned a lengthy writeup on possible candidates the way I did at WaP in 2017 intending to share it with a few friends, but I shelved it after seeing the excellent work that Stephen and Chris did at their blog that covered plenty of bases even if our lists didn't perfectly align (I'd say about 90% the same, as one would expect). I enjoyed doing it and it really engaged me with the program in a very nostalgic fashion. Ultimately, when the three finalists were revealed, I felt really good. Lang was the obvious choice, but I didn't feel like I did in 2006 or 2017 in that there would be any serious let-down in alternative options.

You probably will continue to not see a whole lot of me. I'm now in my early 40s with three young kids, so I don't have a whole lot of time to spend on personal pursuits. I've mentioned this to Stephen before but not to a wider audience: the college hockey world has pretty much passed me by. Having kids and COVID happening basically at the same time, in combination with my public disassociation with the previous administration just before all of that, combined with the contemporaneous evolution of NIL and the transfer portal has basically left me considerably less valuable as a resource (not that people don't still occasionally reach out to me with questions that I honestly can't answer). I used to know who every player on the team was, what class they were in, and who was on the way - now I'm lucky if I know who the better players currently on the team are and couldn't tell you for a variety of reasons if they'll be back next year.

There's still pride there, though. The night my son was born, RPI beat Harvard in double OT (John Beaton) to come within a win of going to Lake Placid, and I spent the next 12 hours in a hospital room doing the mental gymnastics of how I was going to juggle having a week-old child and going to Lake Placid - because I've never been able to imagine not being there when we finally go. The loss the next afternoon was difficult to put a finger on in terms of how I felt. It was a great relief not having to make the case to my wife, but it's still something that I've been waiting for - for me personally, it has now been 30 years since the last time I was in person to see the Engineers in the last weekend of the ECAC tournament.

Lang and the adminstration, I think, are going to need to make some structural changes in order to keep the program relevant in the near-term, but I am more optimistic now than I have been in over a decade, and hopefully we one day look back at this particular inflection point with great memories.
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The Legend Returns !!!
 
Tom, it's good to hear from you. Hope things are all blue skies and green lights for you and your family.
And please say hi to RPIRed and Red Cloud when you see them.
 
Tom great to hear from you and thank you for the kind words about our post. Having you back around is a great thing for the forum and our program as a whole!
 
Engineers said:
I hope lang is trying to get the two RIT forwards who just entered the portal. Both put up very good numbers the last two years.
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This entire process took quite some time. I am sure an accomplished fellow like Lang would not have entered into this without some plans in mind. We will just have to wait a bit to see how this plays out. Would be surprised though if we do not see some substantial movement before the end of May or June. He is certainly not a novice at this and there seems to be a fairly large supply of talent to evaluate before making decisions.
 
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