Photo Credit: Kelsey Lee-Violet Turtle Photography

Head Coach for AIC, Eric Lang, is never one to mince words. His staff and Lang are where they are in the college hockey landscape in part due to their brutal honesty and desire to build a team focused on details on and off the ice.

Today those details, or lack of refining them, was part of what lead AIC to take 24 penalty minutes on eight infractions. That included Brian Kramer being ejected for a spearing major and severely hurting the depth of the AIC blue line for the rest of the game. Those same lack of details against a strong RIT side who has improved in finding scoring in all places also was why AIC was outshot in the second and third by a combined total of 23-11.

Lang said it best in noting that “Playing with great discipline doesn’t guarantee that you win the game but playing without discipline guarantees you are going to lose it.” An emblematic example of this can be found from Blake Bennett. He scored a great goal in the late in the second period to put AIC up 3-2. A mere 14 seconds into the third he trips a tiger at the blue line, and RIT gets a power play goal in the third.

On the Kramer major and other penalties Lang said this afternoon “We won’t tolerate selfish penalties. I haven’t looked at them yet but if you took a stupid penalty today I wouldn’t sleep well tonight.”

Lang summed the day up well “It’s really disappointing because we had good legs and execution 5v5 and we just weren’t able to play enough 5v5 hockey. Credit RIT they played with great discipline and beat us at our own game. We will see what kind of resolve we have for tomorrow. I hope some guys go to sleep tonight and say we gave away 3 points.”

AIC comes into tomorrow facing as close to a “must win” game in November that they could have. Expect copious lineup changes from Lang as he has often done after a game like today.

One positive for AIC in a day of negatives , Lang did single out two freshman for their growth this year, Brett Rylance and Josh Barnes “I loved Rylance and Barnes today. They are emerging as really good D1 hockey players right now.”

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