The No. 1 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers played about 119 minutes of improved defensive hockey this past weekend.

Just 68 seconds seemed to foil all of their hard work as the Icers (23-6-2) dropped two games to No. 2 Rhode Island (29-1-3).

The Rams scored three goals in a little more than a minute, spanning the end of Friday's game and the start of Saturday's. The goals closed out Friday's 2-1 overtime win and gave Rhode Island a quick 1-0 lead in Saturday's 4-3 victory.

With just seconds remaining in Friday's contest and Penn State leading 1-0, Rhode Island had its goalie pulled and the puck in the Penn State zone. For about 30 seconds, the teams battled for the puck, and when Icers forward Dave Arcobello flipped the puck down the ice, the standing-room-only crowd celebrated as the buzzer sounded.

However, the puck took a funny bounce that sent it rolling on edge, and the whistle blew for icing with just two seconds remaining. Each team took a penalty during some "post-game" exchanges.

With the extra attacker, the Rams had a 5-on-4 advantage for the faceoff in the Icers' zone. A quick win of the draw led to a pass to Eric Hogberg, who snapped a quick shot, beating Icers goaltender Paul Mammola. As soon as the puck crossed the line, the horn sounded and the head referee frantically waved off the goal.

Although it was a close call on whether time had expired or not, the net had clearly been knocked off. After a very long and drawn-out conference between the officials, it was determined that the goal would count.

"There were two seconds on the clock when we iced it, and there was time on the clock when they scored the goal," Icers head coach Joe Battista said. "The referee waved it off, the net was off and a linesman comes in and talks to the referee, and that shouldn't happen."

The game headed to overtime and, in just 49 seconds, Rhode Island forward Mike Curran skated in wide and ripped a shot that ended the Icers' night.

With a loss as devastating as that, one would think the Icers would have come out on fire to start Saturday's afternoon game.

However, it was the Rams that came out on a mission Saturday, scoring on the first shift of the game, only 17 seconds after the puck dropped.

While Icers endured one of the most unfortunate minutes a team could experience, they kept coming back, tying the Rams three times. However, since the controversial goal to end Friday's game, the Icers never led again.

"We were never able to get that full momentum back and actually get ahead," senior captain Brett Wilson said. "They were able to get up on us and every time we tied it up they were able to turn it up a notch and we didn't match it."

Even though the Icers managed to net three goals on Saturday, it wasn't enough as Rhode Island goaltender Anthony Feyock was standing on his head all weekend. On Friday night the netminder for the Rams stopped 51 of the Icers' shots, giving up just one picture-perfect goal to Frank Berry.

In all, Feyock totaled 81 saves and posted a .953 save percentage as he consistently came up big when the Icers had scoring chances.

"He's a big kid; he covers a lot of ground," Wilson said. "You have really got to work hard and you've got to score on rebounds and their defense did a good job of clearing the net. It's basically a dogfight every shot and rebound in there, and they played it well."

It did not help that the Icers squandered chance after chance to score in both games. The power play, which has been clicking lately, was also inconsistent during the weekend.

Late in Saturday's game, forward Paul Zodtner picked up the puck just outside of his defensive zone and carried it into Rhode Island's. His play both killed an Icers penalty and drew a penalty on the Rams.

With the power play poised to tie the game at four goals apiece, the unit struggled, never getting fully set up.

"We are a very average team when we try to go by ourselves -- when we move the puck; we're awesome," Battista said. "I don't know what happened, if they see the big crowd and decide they're going to go Hollywood on us."