The Robert Morris Colonials have been looking for more offense out of their very talented group of forwards. They received that on Saturday, getting five goals from four different scorers in a 5-1 clubbing of the now 1-13 RIT Tigers at the Gene Polisseni Center in Rochester.
The Colonials had seen their top line provide plenty of scoring, and as Alan Saunders wrote on Friday, recently the line of Aneta Ledlova, Mackenzie Johnston, and Sarah Quaranta had been chipping in more often. Defender Kirsten Welsh had joined in with a couple of clutch goals.
But instead, it was a total team effort, as ten different Colonials had points on Saturday. Maeve Garvey opened the scoring in the first, collecting a clearing attempt by RIT and firing it from between the circles past goaltender Brooke Stoddart. Amanda Pantaleo redirected a Jessica Gazzola shot into the net less than two minutes later.
In the second, Jaycee Gebhard and Brittany Howard used a textbook give-and-go play to draw the RIT defenders away, allowing the first year forward to seal the deal on her seventh of the young season.
Captain Rikki Meilleur joined in when she tipped a Katherine Murphy shot through the senior netminder’s five hole. Pantaleo finished the scoring off on an effort play, driving as far as she could to the net, firing a backhand and depositing the rebound for her second of the day.
Senior netminder Jessica Dodds stopped 23 of 24 shots she saw, and improved to 4-0-3 on the season while lowering her already stellar goals against average to 1.52.
The Colonials will head into their first idle week of the season with a record of 9-1-4, leading in College Hockey America by two points over Penn State. They are in action again in two weeks, at the Windjammer Classic Tournament in Vermont, where the team will be paired up with currently ranked No. 7 Clarkson. That matchup will occur at 7:00PM on Friday, November 25th.
The other participants include a familiar foe in Vermont, whom the Colonials played to a 1-0-1 record at 84 Lumber Arena on October 14th and 15th and St. Cloud State, who has a 3-6-1-1 record on the season. They aren’t scheduled to return to the 84 Lumber arena until December 30th against Brown.
