Union advances to RPI Tournament championship game with shootout win

After a scoreless 65 minutes Mario Valery-Trabucco scored the only goal of the shootout to send the Dutchmen to the championship game where they will face the winner of the RPI-Bentley game. Freshman goaltender Keith Kinkaid made 30 saves for his first career shutout, along with stopping all three of Lake State's shooters in the shootout. The game will officially go down as a tie. LSSU's Kyle Haynes had a great opportunity to win the game for the Lakers with under one minutes left in overtime, but whiffed on his shot with an open net.

Even though I was not at the game (I'm enjoying my winter break at home), I did get to listen to the majority of the game on the radio. From what I can tell it was a pretty unexciting and sluggish game even though each team had a combined 60 shots on net. But, you have to be happy with the way Kinkaid played (it looks like most of you got what you wanted in goal), and advancing to the championship game. Hopefully this will repeat scenario of what happened in last year's Governor's Cup where Union advanced to the championship game with a shootout victory over RPI, and then won the tournament with a win over Colgate. Personally, I'd like to see RPI win tonight because Union-RPI games are always fun and it would be a stronger test for the Dutchmen considering RPI is better than Bentley on paper.

For those who haven't heard or didn't notice during the game senior captains Jason Walters and Andrew Buote did not dress tonight due to team violations. Supposedly more players violated the rule and will not play tomorrow. I haven't heard any word on what the infraction was. It is interesting that both of the players who sat out tonight were senior captains. Maybe Wakita, Schreiber, Matheson, and/or Presizniuk will be out tomorrow.

If RPI wins the Dutchmen will play at 7pm tomorrow, but if Bentley wins they will play for the championship at 4pm.

Here's the game recap from UnionAthletics.com:
http://www.unionathletics.com/news/2009/11/27/MICE_1127093453.aspx

Here's video of the shooout along with post-game interviews:
http://www.dailygazette.com/videos/2009/nov/27/319/