They're still not playing their best hockey of the season, not as well as they're ultimately capable of playing in head coach Derek Schooley's estimation.

But what they've done of late has been better than ever.

No. 19 Robert Morris stretched its winning streak to a school-record six consecutive games with a 5-4, 5-2 sweep of Air Force last weekend.

The back-to-back triumphs included RMU pulling goaltender Dalton Izyk in favor of an extra attacker and tying last Friday night's series opener with 53 seconds left in regulation and then winning it at 2:48 of overtime, with Tyson Wilson scoring both goals.

That hadn't happened previously in the program's 11-season NCAA Division I history.

"It just shows the character of the group, that they don't quit," Schooley observed. "I thought we were playing fairly well. We ended up outshooting them (39-27), winning the special teams (RMU was 1 for 3 on the power play and Air Force 0 for 4) and winning the faceoffs (50-26). We were just chasing the scoreboard the whole game.

"I challenged our guys between the second and third periods (with Air Force ahead, 3-1). I said, 'We can mail this in and prepare for tomorrow or we can give it our all and see what happens.'"

The former actually wasn't an option.

But nor did the players have to be told twice regarding the latter.

And in the end the comeback helped propel RMU to a sweep in a venue (Cadet Ice Arena) in which it had lost seven consecutive games dating back to the 2006-07 season.    
Air Force hadn't been swept at home since March of 2013 (Canisius in the Atlantic Hockey postseason).

"We did the little things well," Schooley assessed. "On Friday night we were very good on faceoffs and on special teams. Our energy was good and we put a lot of pucks on the net. On Saturday we got a lead and we blocked a tremendous amount of shots (25) and we got into shooting lanes, which forced them to miss the net a lot (Air Force had 28 shots on goal on 81 attempts).

"We believe in what we're doing, we believe in how we play and we believe if we work extremely hard good things will happen."

That belief has blossomed in the past 13 months for a Robert Morris team that went 17-6-3 to close out last season and has forged a 19-5-4 record this season for a combined 36-11-7 mark (.731 winning percentage) since Jan. 1, 2014.

This season's 16-3-3 record in Atlantic Hockey (35 points) has the Colonials contemplating, if only briefly, magic numbers and an eventual clinching of the conference's regular-season championship heading into this weekend's hosting of second-place Canisius (12-8-6 overall, 11-4-5 AHC).

The series will match the two hottest teams in college hockey (Canisius is 6-0-1 in its last seven games and RMU 6-0 in its last six) and rematch the two participants in last season's Atlantic Hockey championship game (won by the Colonials, 7-4, last March 22 in Rochester, N.Y.).

As delicious as all of that sounds, the idea for Robert Morris first and foremost will be to keep the pedal down.

"You gotta make sure you're playing your best hockey come playoff time," Schooley said. "We want to continue to do things the right way.

"We don't want to take a step back in anything that we're doing."

A longtime member of the WDVE Morning Show and a college hockey aficionado, Mike 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.

Follow Mike on Twitter at @DVEMike.