Photo courtesy of Justin Berl/RMU Athletics
NEVILLE TWP.,PA- The Niagara Purple Eagles brought a strong, 60 minute effort and some opportunistic scoring with them, combined with some timely saves from starting net minder Pierce Charleson that they used in scoring a key, 7-3 conference victory over the home standing Robert Morris University Colonials on Friday night at Clearview Arena. For the Colonials, a first period of missed opportunities rolled into frustration as the game progressed and snowballed into a situation where they found themselves competitive on the stat sheet, but far too short on the scoreboard.
“They did what they wanted to do,” Colonial head coach Derek Schooley remarked. “They were going to come in with a 1-1-3 and clog up the neutral zone and hats off to them, they executed their game plan and we didn’t”
Robert Morris started out once again with a strong first twenty minutes as they outshot the Eagles by a 13-9 margin. However, for the Eagles, it was more about quality than quantity in terms of offensive chances as they were able to take advantage of a few shaky moments from the Colonials backline and turn them into scoring chances. Nathan Oickle managed to break a scoreless deadlock with his first career NCAA goal at 7:33 of the first period on what appeared to be a strange deflection that made its way past starting Colonial goaltender Croix Kochendorfer for the early lead. The Colonials managed to come within inches of a tying goal throughout the rest of the period but were either held off the scoreboard by Charleson, while other shots misfired when the net was yawning, any of them perhaps could have helped turn momentum the Colonials way.
Eagles Explode for Four in Second Stanza
Niagara then seized total control of the scoreboard in the second period as Trevor Hoskin and Ethan Lund stretched the lead to 3-0 with goals just over four minutes apart in the early going. Mitch Deelstra then found the back of the net for the Colonials with a power play tally for his first career goal to cut the Purple Eagle advantage at 8:57 of the period, putting Robert Morris very much pack in the game. However, the Eagles came right back with a Noah Hackett goal just over two minutes later to get the momentum and three goal lead back. With Robert Morris reeling following the goal, Kochendorfer was chased and replaced in the Colonial net by freshman Dawson Smith who saw the first regular season action of his career. Smith got tested early as Spencer Young made it a 5-1 Niagara lead with his goal at 18:51 capping off a four goal period.
“We gave up more odd man rushes in this game than we did the entire weekend last week,” Schooley added. “They took advantage of our mistakes and we need to be better tomorrow.”
Colonials Secondary Scoring Propels Third Period Push
The Colonials dominant top line of Walter Zacher, Tanner Klimpke and Cameron Garvey had been held in check through the first 40 minutes, but scoring from other places arrived in the third frame as Robert Morris made a furious push to get back into the game in the final frame. Transfer senior Cory Monds cut across the slot after taking a pass from Michael Felsing and buried it past Charleson to make it a 5-2 game at 3:40. Then at 10:59, Felsing beat Charleson from close range to make it 5-3 for his first goal as a Colonial. The goals lifted the Colonials as they went to work on another tally to give themselves a decent chance in the final minutes but were thwarted as Jay Ahearn and Spencer Young pumped in two late goals for the Eagles to seal the victory.
“We hit a goal post in the first period, we had a couple of chances and we hit a cross bar when it was 1-0,” Schooley said. And when you get a couple of chances and you don’t finish you start gripping the stick a little bit and then its 2-0, 3-0 and unfortunately every time we made a push they had an answer. College hockey is sprint as far as games go but a marathon as far as the season goes so with that, you have to take it and learn. We’re still young, we had 16 freshman and sophomores in the lineup and you’re going to go through some going pains. Maybe from the top down we got a little comfortable against Miami last week, we felt good about ourselves and this knocked us back a little bit.”
The two teams finish their head to head weekend series tomorrow night at Dwyer Arena with at 7 PM faceoff.
