There won't be any ceremony or celebration prior to the puck dropping on 2014-15 when Robert Morris welcomes Lake Superior State to the Island Sports Center this weekend.

"We're focused on the upcoming season," head coach Derek Schooley emphasized. "We're just going to come out and play."

The Colonials also won't be comparing resumes with the Lakers, seemingly another good idea in advance of the 7 p.m. starts on Friday and Saturday on Neville Island.

Robert Morris enters as an NCAA Tournament participant from a season ago after securing the program's first Atlantic Hockey Association championship victory and first automatic bid to the NCAA's 16-team event. The 2013-14 Colonials went 19-18-5 overall and 13-9-5 in AHA play.

Last spring, Lake Superior finished ninth in its first season in the 10-team Western Collegiate Hockey Association (16-19-1 overall, 12-16-0 WCHA). The Lakers' early-season success last October included a pair of 3-1 home victories over Robert Morris and two wins at Union (6-5 in overtime and 3-2).

Union went on to win the national championship.

Lake Superior knows a little something about that, having captured national titles in 1987-88, 1991-92 and 1993-94. The Lakers came within a national championship game loss in 1993 of winning three consecutive crowns.

Recognizable NHLers who came to the league from Lake Superior include Jim Dowd, Brian Rolston and Doug Weight. Those three names are all on the Stanley Cup.
 
"They have a history, a tradition of excellence, of winning national championships and having some high-level hockey players play there," Schooley said. "They have the type of program a lot of programs strive to become."

Lake Superior hasn't been that lately; its last NCAA Tournament appearance was in 1995-96. And this season's team is rebuilding under first-year head coach Damon Whitten.

The Lakers opened with 5-3 and 5-1 losses last weekend at Michigan Tech. The top line consists of three sophomores, center Alex Globke (last season's WCHA Freshman of the Year) and wingers Ian Miller and Matt Johnson. The defense pairings against Michigan Tech included at least four freshmen in each game. Freshman goaltender Gordie Defiel started both games against the Huskies. And all nine of Lake Superior's freshmen appeared in at least one of the games.

The Colonials lost their exhibition tune-up against Ryerson, 1-0, on Oct. 4.

Among the 19 returnees from the team that went 17-6-3 in its final 26 games last season are two intact lines that excelled (the Cody Wydo-Scott Jacklin-Zac Lynch and Matt Cope-Greg Gibson-Brandon Denham threesomes) and two experienced goaltenders (Terry Shafer and Dalton Izyk).

Defenseman Tyson Wilson is still recovering from offseason surgery and unavailable for the Lake Superior series but the Colonials will still have one carry-over regular on each of their three defensive pairs (Evan Moore, John Rey and Chase Golightly).

The plan in net is to rotate Shafer and Izyk in the early going.

"There are a lot of teams searching for a No. 1 goalie," Schooley said. "We think we have two of those."

The Colonials have also had the opportunity to take advantage of a full week of practice this week in preparation for Lake Superior. The exhibition against Ryerson followed three weeks during which they were allowed to be on the ice for two hours a week.

"It was a very good chance to compete, a chance to get everybody into a game scenario and a chance to show video to our guys of what we did well and what we need to do better," Schooley said.

Now it's time to come out and play for keeps.

Mike Prisuta has been covering the Pittsburgh sports scene for over 20 years. A longtime member of the WDVE Morning Show, Prisuta also previously served as a reporter for the Beaver County Times and as a columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The Michigan State University graduate got his start in the profession covering the Spartan hockey program. He will provide insights on the RMU men's hockey program throughout the season.