Four months after his last game in a Yale uniform, Ryan Rondeau ’11 has signed a one-year contract with the Laredo, Texas Bucks of the Central Hockey League.

Rondeau posted some of college hockey’s best goaltending numbers last season, including a stingy 1.92 goals against average and .928 save percentage. His solid play in net anchored one of the most successful Eli squads in the program’s history.

“Ryan was at the top of the list in all categories for goaltenders in the NCAA Division I last year,” Laredo head coach Serge Dube said in an Aug. 2 press release. “His hard work in practice will make the team better and I am fully confident putting him in net against any opponent.”

Rondeau is one of two goalies on the Bucks’ roster, which currently has only 13 players and will grow before the team kicks off its season on Oct. 15. He said in an email message from his home province of Alberta, where he has spent the summer training, that the Laredo offer seemed the best for beginning his professional hockey career.

The Bucks are the secondary farm affiliate of the Phoenix Coyotes.

Rondeau, who also had a brief stint last spring with the Adirondack Phantoms of the American Hockey League, is one of two Elis to ink hockey contracts in the past week. Former forward Sean Backman ’10 signed a two-way deal with the New York Islanders on Aug. 8. The minor league component of that deal will bring him back into familiar territory: the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the Islanders’ AHL affiliate, play home games just 20 minutes away from Ingalls Rink. Backman played in the Dallas Stars organization last summer, notching 27 points in 72 games between the AHL and the ECHL.

Correction: August 18, 2011

An earlier version of this blogpost mistakenly stated that Sean Backman ’10 was captain of the men’s hockey team.