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HAMILTON – The Colgate men's ice hockey honored its eight-member senior class Saturday night before Raiders fell to the Rensselaer Engineers, 3-2, at Class of 1965 Arena.
 
With the loss and a Princeton win, Colgate will be seeded No. 10 in the ECAC Hockey Tournament and travel to the No. 7 seed Tigers for a best-of-three first round series at Hobey Baker Rink in Princeton, N.J. from March 3-5.
 
Senior Derek Freeman (Newburyport, Massachusetts) scored early in the third period to give the Raiders a 2-1 lead but Rensselaer stormed back with a pair of goals to take a 3-2 lead over the final 8:46 of the third period.
 
Goaltender Charlie Finn (North Vancouver, British Columbia) controlled the puck behind the net and handed it off for Willie Brooks (Locust, New Jersey) who flung a pass to Tim Harrison (Duxbury, Massachusetts) at the offensive blue line. Harrison quickly found Freeman flying in the backdoor unmarked before backhanding the shot off Rensselaer goaltender Chase Perry's glove and into the net for the power-play goal.
 
Jimmy DeVito tied the game for the Engineers with 9:13 left in the period after Jacob Hayhurst picked off a Colgate pass in the neutral zone and fed DeVito in the left faceoff circle. DeVito skated across the top of the crease and stuffed the puck just under Finn's pads for the goal.
 
Just 27 seconds later, Parker Reno scored his first goal of the season with a blast from the point to give the Engineers the 3-2 lead.
 
Despite being outscored 2-1 in the third period, the Raiders outshot the Engineers 17-4, nearly equaling Rensselaer's shot total for the entire game.
 
Mike Panowyk (Whitby, Ontario) gave the Raiders a 1-0 lead with 4:27 left in the first period to put Colgate on the board first. Ken Citron (Cos Cob, Connecticut) touched a pass from in front of the Raiders bench to Panowyk at the red line. Panowyk tapped it over to Anthony Sanniti (La Salle, Quebec) entering the offensive zone on the right side. Sanniti quickly found Panowyk again, who made a nifty move to bring the puck to his forehand and rifle a shot just under Perry's left arm for the goal.
 
Rensselaer answered back with 11:28 left in the second period as TJ Samec took a Colgate turnover and chucked a pass up to Evan Tironese at the offensive blue line. Tironese skated in one-on-one with Finn before wristing the shot through Finn's five-hole.
 
Three different Raiders recorded points on senior day for the Raiders in Freeman, Sanniti and Harrison while Finn made 18 saves in goal.
 
BOTTOM LINE
Rensselaer 3, Colgate 2
 
WON-LOST RECORDS
The Engineers win their second straight against the Raiders and improve to 8-26-1 (6-16-0 ECAC Hockey) while the Raiders fall for the second straight night and drop to 8-20-6 (6-13-3 ECAC Hockey).
 
KEY RAIDER INFO
-Sanniti tallied an assist to record a point for the second straight night, his first two points on the weekend
-Freeman put home his sixth goal of the season and first since scoring in back-to-back games at Arizona State on Dec 2-3
-Panowyk scored Colgate's other goal, his third of the season to give him 10 points
-Panowyk had points in back-to-back games this weekend for the Raiders
-Harrison picked up his sixth assist of the season to bring his season total to 17 and career total to 50
-Brooks recorded his fifth assist of the season and first since Feb. 3 at Rensselaer while Citron got his third of the season and first since assisting a pair of goals at Yale on Nov. 11
-Brett Corkey (Calgary, Alberta) blocked three more shots to give him 84 this season and maintain his league-leading total
 
FACTS AND FIGURES
-Colgate outshot Rensselaer 29-21 thanks to a 17-4 edge in the third period
-Colgate netted a power-play goal to go 1 for 3 on the man advantage and Rensselaer went 0 for 3
-The Raiders have killed off their last 16 penalties
-Colgate came on strong at the faceoff dot led by Evan Peterson (Lakeville, Minnesota) and Mike Panowyk's game-high 10 faceoff wins
-Rensselaer held a slight edge in blocked shots at 13-9
 
UP NEXT
Colgate travels to Princeton next weekend to open up the ECAC Hockey playoffs against the Tigers in a best-of-three first round series beginning Friday night at Hobey Baker Rink with puck drop set for 7 p.m.