Photo courtesy of Justin Berl/RMU Athletics
NEVILLE TWP., PA-
The frustrations that have emerged during the current four game home losing skid by the Robert Morris Colonials were present once again on Friday night at Clearview Arena. Despite outshooting the Mercyhurst Lakers by a 48-26 margin and controlling long stretches of play, the Colonials lost on the scoreboard 4-2, thanks to a mix opportunistic scoring, timely saves, and some key penalty killing down the stretch. Forwards Ryan Coughlin, Mickey Burns and Steven Agriogianis all scored key goals and contributed two points each to the winning effort while defenseman Dominic Elliot scored his fifth and sixth goals of the season to pace the Colonials.
“I mean you get 48 shots on goal and you’ve got to find a way to score a goal or two,” Robert Morris head coach Derek Schooley said. “We’re playing fine and we need to play better than fine to turn this around and we need more than two goals. We’ve made a lot of goalies look really good and hats off to them, but we’ve been doubling teams in shots and losing games.”
The Lakers wasted no time as Coughlin managed to get his side on the board just: 16 after the drop of the puck for his eighth goal of the season. However, Robert Morris fought back hard the rest of the way in the first frame as the freshman sensation Elliot sent a hard shot which struck iron before making its way in the net to even the score at 12:54. Then, less than a minute later on the opening Colonial power play, Elliot then sent a perfectly placed shot over the shoulder of starting Laker netminder Carter McPhail to give the Colonials the lead which they carried into the dressing room after 20 minutes of play. Once again, the Lakers stunned the Colonials in the opening seconds of the second frame when Burns tallied at the :11 mark to make it a tie game.
The scoring ceased the rest of the way through the middle frame and as the third period opened, the Colonials found themselves on the end of two power play chances that saw McPhail stand tall to keep the game knotted up at two goals each. Agriogianis then put the Lakers out front for good with a power play tally of his own at 10:55, depositing a rebound past starting Colonial goaltender Croix Kochendorfer. Robert Morris threw as many shots and scoring the Lakers way as they could the rest of the way, amassing a 15-5 shot advantage in the final period but could not come up with a response as they dropped their fourth home game in a row.
“It’s a case of frustration right now,” Schooley added. “We’ve got a lot of good players and we’ve got to evaluate ourselves a little bit better. We say we’re good but we’re not good enough. And to get better you’ve got to dig your head out of it, nobody’s going to feel sorry for us and we’re going to have to get after it. But if you look statistically, they were one for two on the power play and we were one for four and that was the difference in the third period.”
The two teams meet once again on Saturday night at Clearview Arena with puck drop scheduled for 7 PM.
