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Eric
and Marc Cavosie
Written
by Stephen Leon
Photographed by Teri Currie
For
brothers Eric and Marc Cavosie, playing hockey once was little
more than a good way to wear themselves out so they wouldn’t
bounce off the walls of their family’s home in Cohoes. “It
was just kind of an activity we picked up in elementary school
during gym class,” recalls Eric, now 21 and, like his 20-year-old
brother Marc, a junior at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
“We were kind of rambunctious, so it worked out well—it got
some of the rowdiness out of us.”
Watching the Cavosie brothers play the fast, physical game
that is required of Division I college hockey players, it’s
almost hard to imagine them at 5 or 6 years old, scooting
around the rink at Albany Academy or at the hockey-skills
school run by Troy’s Dave Randall, who taught both brothers
the finer points of power skating. Visibly proud of two of
his most successful students, Randall often invokes their
names in rinkside chats with his students and/or their parents.
Responding to one parent who is concerned because his two
young sons have been deliberately plowing into each other
during class, Randall says, “That’s what brothers do. The
Cavosie brothers used to do that.” Pausing, and smiling, he
adds, “They probably still do that.”
Indeed, flashes of that fraternal/schoolboy competitiveness
are evident during a recent interview with Eric and Marc Cavosie
in the home locker room at RPI’s Houston Field House. When
I relate how my 4-year-old son likes to knock over my 6-year-old
on the ice, Marc Cavosie says, chuckling, “I didn’t have to
knock him [Eric] over. He fell on his own.”
Having skated and played hockey together pretty much continuously
for 15 years, the brothers agree that they have always been
competitive with each other. “We were always on the same team,”
notes Marc, “always competitive for ice time, who got more
points. . . . But really, it was just fun.” Then he adds,
with a sidelong glance at Eric, “For me it was, anyway.”
“It
was fun for me too,” affirms Eric quickly. “The added advantage
of one-upping my brother kinda helped out, made it a little
bit nicer, always trying to be a little bit better than he
was.”
In their years playing hockey for Albany Academy, both Eric
and Marc excelled in obvious ways: Both were high scorers,
and both served as captains, Eric for two years, Marc for
one. At RPI, however, the brothers have had to adjust to their
diverging roles—especially Eric, who now skates in Marc’s
shadow as a defensive-minded forward. While Marc leads the
team in scoring with 21 goals and 25 assists—he is fifth in
the nation in points per game—Eric’s primary role is to keep
opponents’ best forwards away from the RPI net, kill penalties,
and grind it out in the corners. It is a role that easily
could go unnoticed, though the well-versed hockey fans at
the Field House have been known to voice their appreciation
for Eric’s hard work—as has his coach, Dan Fridgen.
“He’s
very consistent,” says Fridgen, who frequently sends out the
line of Cavosie, Jim Henkel and Chris Migliore against opponents’
top lines. “You know what you’re going to get. And his off-ice
work habits are second to none.”
Marc Cavosie concurs. “He doesn’t necessarily get a lot of
attention,” Marc says, “but if you watch a typical shift of
Eric’s, he works his ass off every second he’s out there.
Every shift. . . . He [also] has a real hard shot, probably
one of the hardest shots on the team. I don’t think he gets
it off enough.”
Marc, on the other hand, has plenty of chances to score and
to set up his teammates: As one of the most effective puckhandlers
in the Eastern College Athletic Conference, he is expected
to carry a considerable portion of RPI’s offensive workload.
He’s a cornerstone on the power play, he often skates on an
extra shift in addition to his shift with his own line, and
now and then Fridgen teams him up with RPI’s other puckhandling
wizard, senior forward Matt Murley. Like Murley, Cavosie has
an uncanny knack for controlling the puck in the offensive
zone while defensemen either flail helplessly at him or hang
back nervously to avoid being beaten, giving him time to wait
for cracks to develop in the defense, which he exploits with
deft passes or sudden dashes toward the net.
“Marc
is really skilled, he skates real well, he’s got excellent
balance, his puckhandling is amazing, his vision of the ice
is the best I’ve seen,” says his brother. “He does a real
good job of eluding players—you watch a game, it’s not going
to be one guy that’s going to take him out, it’s going to
be the second or third guy—and I bet you half the time, he
gets away from that second or third guy.”
But being that good comes at a price: Opponents routinely
rough him up, hoping to throw him off of his game or, better
yet, get him to take unnecessary retaliatory penalties. And
the fact that Marc leads the team in penalty minutes underscores
that he sometimes takes the bait. “A lot of my penalties are
out of frustration,” Marc admits. “Every shift you come off
with a new scrape or a new bruise, and it takes its toll on
you.”
And while being a good older brother might mean sharing a
few words of wisdom in such situations, it can also mean knowing
when to keep quiet. Marc recalls a game in which he had taken
a couple of penalties, and several teammates let him know
about it—but not Eric. “I realized I was frustrated,” Marc
recalls, “and I didn’t necessarily want to hear it from everybody
on the team. But Eric knew not to say anything.”
“I
just knew that getting into that subject with Marc would just
make him that much more angry or agitated,” Eric adds.
It’s been an up-and-down season for the Engineers, and at
their lowest, they found themselves in last place in the 12-team
ECAC. But their fortunes began to turn around over two key
midseason weekends in which both Cavosie brothers played crucial
roles. RPI had just lost to Dartmouth at home, blowing a two-goal
lead in the third period, and had to play the rematch in Hanover,
N.H., six nights later. Again, the Engineers blew a two-goal
lead, but this time, they held on to the tie—and staved off
a four-on-three Dartmouth power play in overtime. Fridgen
credits the entire penalty-killing unit, of which Eric Cavosie
is a key member, with getting RPI over that hump.
RPI returned home the next weekend and turned back St. Lawrence
3-2—this time bending, but not breaking, as the Saints rallied
in the third period. The next night, RPI finally did to Clarkson
what teams had been doing to RPI all season long, coming back
from a three-goal deficit to win 4-3 in overtime. The tying
goal, with less than a minute to play, came on a blistering
shot from Marc Cavosie.
“With
his offensive ability,” says Fridgen, “in situations where
you need a goal, he certainly can be relied on.”
The Engineers’ late-season surge culminated in a victory over
Colgate last Saturday that vaulted them into the ECAC’s final
home-ice slot for the playoffs. They will play a first-round
two-out-of-three series against Princeton at the Houston Field
House Friday and Saturday, and Sunday if necessary, at 7 PM.
The winner of this series will go to Lake Placid the following
weekend for the ECAC Final Five championship playoff.
However RPI fares in the playoffs, two of the key players
will be two brothers who have played together nearly nonstop
since they were barely tall enough to see over the boards.
Though their roles on the ice have diverged, the competitive
approach they share remains the same.
“I’d
say the only difference coming here was that we adopted different
roles,” concludes Marc. “At this level, you have to accept
your role on the team for the team to do well. You can’t try
to do your own thing.”
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