Box Score

NEW HAVEN, CT -- For the second straight night, the Yale men's hockey team needed overtime to get past Rensselaer. This time it was Sean Backman's goal at 5:11 of extra session that gave the Bulldogs a 3-2 win and a two-game sweep of the ECAC Hockey first-round series.

Backman followed up a rebound on the edge of the crease for his first and the biggest point of the weekend.

"It was a broken play. Cahill [Chris] got the puck to the point and then Donald [Ryan] did a good job of getting it on net," said Backman, whose OT game-winner was his first at any level of hockey. "It was a scramble and I just got my stick on it first. I put it on my backhand and flipped it through his [RPI goalie Mathias Lange] legs."

Yale (15-12-4) outshot the visitors 38-18 before 2,320 enthusiastic fans during the last Bulldog game at Ingalls Rink this year. Junior Alec Richards, whose three wins this year came in the last three games, made 16 saves.

Rensselaer got another strong showing from junior Mathias Lange, who had 35 stops but couldn't get quite enough support at the other end. RPI, scoreless on three man-advantages, finished the season at 11-23-4.

The Bulldogs, who took their first playoff series at home since 1998, outshot the Engineers 11-5 and had three power-play chances but found themselves down a pair after 20 minutes.

After giving up the game's first two goals on Friday, RPI got on the board first during a 4-on-4 late in the first period. Tyler Helfrich skated in from the blueline and circled behind the net from right to left. Richards saw him moving but could not get to the opposite post in time to intercept Helfrich when he wheeled to wrap around a shot. The Engineer winger easily deposited the puck into the back of the net for his ninth goal of the year at 18:17.

Fifty seconds later Jonathan Ornelas (9^th goal) made a great move on three Yale defenders to put the visitors up 2-0. The senior forward crossed the Bulldog blueline, skated around and through some Elis before finding himself with space in the right circle. Ornelas put the puck on his forehand and fired a shot stick side and belt high on Richards with 53 seconds left in the opening frame.

The Bulldogs buzzed the RPI net from the start of the second and got one back during a delayed penalty call. After an Engineer player took out his own goalie and slid into the net, defenseman Ryan Donald, standing along the boards with a perfect view of the net, fired a wrister on the ice past both RPI players 1:47 into the period.

Yale, which outshot the red 10-3 in the third, continued to apply pressure the rest of the way but could not break through until Denny Kearney's forechecking effort late the third produced another big Broc Little goal.

Kearney stole the puck from a defender in the RPI end and had two players all over him as he barely managed to get a backhander on net. The low shot went off Lange's stick and bounced out a few feet from the crease. Little, who had the game-winner in overtime last night, was crashing the net at full speed when he saw the juicy rebound and whacked at the loose puck with the backhand of his stick. He got just enough on it to send it past Lange's glove with 5:21 left.

The Elis had five of the six shots on target in the overtime but Richards never got tested in the fourth frame.

"It was a good game for us though we were fighting from behind all night," said Keith Allain '80, Yale's Malcolm G. Chace Head Coach of Hockey. "This has been one of the trademarks of this team. It has been resilient, battling back from adversity time after time."

The Bulldogs will play next weekend in a quarterfinal series at either Princeton or Harvard.