Penn State Sports Network<\/a><\/p>\nRIT started the season 10-2 but started to slump shortly before Thanksgiving. The Tigers have lost six of their last seven games, and this will be their first contest against a team currently ranked in the USCHO Poll.<\/p>\n
Christian Catalano and Evan Konyen lead the Tigers with six goals each this season. RIT scores just 2.6 goals per game and is tied for 54th in the NCAA in shots on goal per game (25.5). This team is limited offensively and has not scored more than three goals in its last ten games.<\/p>\n
RIT boasts one of the top goaltenders in the country in Jakub Krbecek. He has a .929 save percentage and 1.83 GAA in his first 16 starts this season. Penn State\u2019s offense will be the toughest he has seen this season, but the numbers speak for themselves. The Tigers are also 10th in the NCAA in shots against per game (25.2). A faster paced game will benefit Penn State, although the Nittany Lions have struggled against teams that can clog the neutral zone and limit offensive pressure.<\/p>\n
RIT is a bit of a half-team on special teams, ranking 61st on the power play (9.2%) but 2nd on the penalty kill (91.2%). Penn State will need to make the most of its chances on the power play. Hopefully Aiden Fink\u2019s return will give the man advantage a boost.<\/p>\n
I am anticipating a slow start for Penn State in this series. The first game is on the road, several of the top players just came back from Switzerland, and Gavin McKenna is not playing. That said, Penn State has the talent and goaltending to take both games this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After six long weeks without Penn State hockey, the Nittany Lions return to the ice tonight to start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,2149],"class_list":{"0":"post-388799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-penn-state-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115832586532740550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}