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HAMILTON – The Colgate men's ice hockey team received contributions from all over the line chart Sunday night as the Raiders posted a 2-0 shutout over Rensselaer to advance to the ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals for the first time since the 2014-15 season.
 
Colgate will face No. 10/9 Clarkson in a best-of-three quarterfinals series beginning Friday night at 7 p.m. at Cheel Arena.
 
Sophomore goaltender Colton Point (North Bay, Ontario) tied the program record for shutouts in a single season with his sixth of the year. Point tied the record held by Mark Dekanich '08 in 2007-08 and Charlie Finn '17 in 2014-15.
 
Point also recorded the first postseason shutout by a Colgate goaltender since Eric Mihalik '14 blanked Quinnipiac on March 11, 2012 in Game Three of the ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals.
 
Offensively, Evan Tschumi (Calgary, Alberta) scored his first career goal with his third period tally while Rory McGuire (Bracebridge, Ontario) had the impressive feed for his first assist of the season.
 
Josh McKechney (Calgary, Alberta) scored his fifth goal of the season with his game-winner early in the second period which ultimately proved to be the difference.
 
With the Raiders on the power play, Willie Brooks (Locust, New Jersey) worked the puck into the offensive zone on a pass to Mike Panowyk (Whitby, Ontario) standing at the blue line along the left boards. Panowyk made a great move to get around a lunging defender before he backhanded the pass to Brooks at the bottom of the left circle. Brooks worked a centering feed into the crease for McKechney who streaked in behind the defense to tap home the goal with 14:06 left in the second period.
 
Colgate dominated the first two periods with a 28-9 advantage in shots and held on to the 1-0 lead heading into the third period.
 
Tschumi found the back of the net early in the third period to double the Raiders lead. Brooks skated into the neutral zone with the puck and passed it to McGuire in stride to lead him into the offensive zone. McGuire threw a bounce pass off the end boards where Adam Dauda (Kitchener, Ontario) tapped the puck back to McGuire at the bottom of the circle. McGuire fed a perfect pass under an RPI defender's stick to Tschumi on the backdoor for the tip-in goal just 3:05 into the final frame.
 
After Tschumi's goal, Rensselaer ramped up their pressure and outshot Colgate 14-4 in the period but Point was perfect in net, steering aside every shot he faced.
 
BOTTOM LINE
Colgate 2, Rensselaer 0
 
WIN/LOSS RECORDS
The Raiders won a playoff series for the first time since the 2014-15 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals with its 2-0 shutout Sunday night to improve to 16-15-6 while the Engineers season comes to an end with a record of 6-27-4.
 
KEY RAIDER INFO
-Colgate won a first round playoff series for the first time since the 2010-11 season when they beat Rensselaer in three games
-Point tied the program record for shutouts in a single season with his sixth shutout
-Point also recorded Colgate's first postseason shutout since March 11, 2012 when the Eric Mihalik '14 shut out the Quinnipiac Bobcats to advance to the league semifinals
-Point stopped all 23 shots he faced and has now allowed two goals or fewer 11 consecutive starts
-He lowered his GAA to 1.62 and raised his nation-leading save percentage to .948
-Tschumi scored his first career goal Sunday night, becoming the 10th different Colgate player to score their first career goal this season
-McKechney's goal was his fifth of the season, as well as first power-play goal and game-winning goal
-McGuire recorded his first assist of the season playing in just his 11th game
-Colgate joined Dartmouth as the only two programs in ECAC Hockey with every skater recording a point
-Panowyk picked up his ninth assist and tied his career-high for points in a season with 18
-Brooks recorded his second assist of the postseason and third in the last four games
-Dauda also tallied his ninth assist of the season to give him 17 points, tied for the third most on the team
 
FACTS AND FIGURES
-Colgate outshot Rensselaer 32-23, including 28-9 through the first two periods
-The Raiders netted a power-play goal to go 1 for 6 on the man advantage while the Engineers were 0 for 4
-Colgate has killed off its last 18 penalties in the past seven games
-The Raiders also won the faceoff battle 35-21 behind McKechney's game-high 13 faceoff wins

FROM THE SOURCE
Head Coach Don Vaughan
On picking up the series win
"I'm just really proud of our team. We faced some adversity today losing some guys to illness right before the game. We always ask the guys that aren't in the lineup to be ready and on Thursday at our team meeting I said everybody on the roster needed to be ready because we might need use everyone before it's over and that's exactly what happened.
 
"I'm really proud of Rory McGuire, Ross Craig and Nick Quillan for being ready to go tonight. We called Rory at 5:30 to say he had to play and had a huge assist tonight. We talk about being a tight-knit group and that's certainly a sign of it.
 
"It's a big step for our young team to not only get home ice, which we talked about, but getting a playoff win. That will go a long way in the long run."
 
On Evan Tschumi's goal
"It was a huge goal. Rory found him coming out of the corner and Tschumi was heavy on his stick, that wasn't going to get by him. He's a physical presence. We have to harness some of that a little bit but we need that in our lineup. I'm just happy that he was able to score that huge goal for us."
 
On Colton Point
"He's the real deal. He wasn't overworked tonight. We did a really good job of containing them but when they did have opportunities he tracked the puck as well as he always does. It was another great shutout but I'm sure he'd be the first to say that the defense in front of him played pretty solid. I'm glad we have him and someone else doesn't."
 
Freshman Evan Tschumi
On his first career goal
"It was a great play by Rory to see me backdoor, props to him. He had to step in late as we had guys sick. He made a great play. It was definitely a weight off my shoulder to get that first goal but all that matters is we got the win and were able to move on."

On facing Clarkson in the quarterfinals
"We're definitely aware of where we were picked at the beginning of the year. It's good that we approached this year with that underdog mentality. It went a long way and we have been able to prove a lot of people wrong. We're moving on to the second round and who knows what can happen against Clarkson."

UP NEXT
The Raiders advanced to the ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals where they will take on No. 10/9 Clarkson at Cheel Arena in the best-of-three games series beginning Friday night with all game times scheduled for 7 p.m.