TROY -- Full days off on the road are rare in pro hockey and former Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute star and current Toronto Marlies left winger Jerry D'Amigo spent part of his on Wednesday hanging out with his former Engineers teammates.

Visible right away is the remnants of a shiner over D'Amigo's left eye, suffered in a fight against Colton Gillies of the Houston Aeros on Friday night.

D'Amigo explained.

"The guy cross-checked from behind," D'Amigo said. "I wasn't going to take it, so I went back and chased him across the ice. He was bigger than me, so I didn't give him time to think. We got the helmets off, he got a hold of me and started going. Whatever. First pro fight.

"I thought I held my own though," said D'Amigo, who says he's never considered himself the least bit a fighter. (See a tape of D'Amigo's comments at www.troyrecord.com).

D'Amigo watched the Engineers practice this morning and liked being back in Houston Field House for a couple hours.

"Feels good," he said. "It looks nice, the renovations (new lighting, new facefront) and it's good to see the guys. I miss them a lot.

"Hopefully, they'll come to the game (Thursday) night."

Rugged road trip: The Marlies are in the midst of an eight games in 11 nights, road trip.

They played in Houston on Friday night, Fort Worth on Saturday night, then bused to Oklahoma City for a game on Sunday. The avoid extensive flight connections, they bused back to Dallas-Fort Worth International for a flight to Hartford.

D'Amigo scored his scored professional goal in the Marlies' victory at Hartford Tuesday night, had four shots on goal and was a plus-1.

After the game against the Phantoms Thursday night, they play at Hershey on Friday night, at his hometown of Binghamton on Saturday night.

It's no wonder D'Amigo appeared as if he was trying to relax at HFH today.

He said be bought 100 tickets for family and friends at Binghamton's Broome County Arena.

Though the Engineers will have a 50-minute drive afterward and have a big game (at rival Union) on Friday, D'Amigo said he hopes some of them can take in tomorrow night's game.

Throws some pucks at the net: Shots on goal can often be a misleading statistic. The Engineers, for example, scored four goals on just 21 shots.

The next night, though, they put only 19 on the Harvard net in an aggravating 1-0 loss.

You can only get by with 20-ish shots on goal for a game here, a game there.

Rensselaer forwards, other than Chase Polacek's line (Polacek 38 shots, C.J. Lee 21, Tyler Helfrich 14), need to start firing pucks between the goal posts.