TROY -- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will again be a shorthanded hockey team this weekend when the Engineers host Brown and Yale in a pair important ECAC Hockey games.
    Junior winger Matt Tinordi, injured in last week's 4-3 overtime victory at St. Lawrence, has been declared out for the season with a knee injury.
   Senior center-right winger Marty O'Grady will still be sidelined with concussion symptoms and both senior captain C.J. Lee and junior center Brock Higgs have been ill this week, though both expect to play Friday night.
   Either Andrew Commers or Travis Fulton, both freshmen, will take over for Tinordi.
   Unless Lee and/or Higgs does not play, RPI will still have its top nine scorers among forwards.
   The loss of Tinordi's physical play will be missed, however, especially against Brown, perhaps the ECACH's most physical team. And a healthy O'Grady -- which he and the team haven't had all season -- is a valuable asset.
   "We've had injuries before," said RPI coach Seth Appert, "and we've shown we can overcome adversity. We'll just have to do it again."
   The Engineers, who've won their past six ECACH games, are in a three-way tie for third place with Princeton and Dartmouth, each with a 7-6-3 league record.
   Princeton owns the three-way tie-breaker. Second-place Yale (9-6-1) is four points ahead of the trio and Brown (5-6-5) is just two points back after a 4-1-1 skein.