Veteran sportswriter, member of the WDVE Morning Show and hockey aficionado Mike Prisuta has been covering the Pittsburgh sports scene for over 20 years. He has covered Pittsburgh sports as a reporter for the Beaver County Timesand as a columnist for thePittsburgh Tribune-Review and has had his pulse on the happenings of each of the professional organizations and college programs in the area. A graduate of Michigan State University, Prisuta got his start in the profession covering the Spartan hockey program and possesses knowledge of the college hockey world unmatched in the region.

Throughout the 2012-13 season, Prisuta will serve up weekly stories surrounding Colonial hockey as well as the latest notes and news around college hockey.

Prisuta on Pucks: Playing the Best Hockey

One of the goals all season was a top-four finish and a first-round bye in the Atlantic Hockey Association tournament, but an even bigger objective for Robert Morris was to be playing its best hockey of the season whenever it entered the postseason.

After missing out on the former but achieving the latter the Colonials are ready to take their postseason chances, beginning this weekend against Sacred Heart.

Head coach Derek Schooley's team enters the best-of-three, first-round series that opens Friday night at the Island Sports Center riding a five-game unbeaten streak (3-0-2).

The Colonials have also played better hockey of late, in Schooley's estimation, than they had throughout what became a seven-game unbeaten run (5-0-2) from Nov. 30 through Dec. 29.

“We were doing it before with phenomenal goaltending,” Schooley explained. “Eric Levine was standing on his head, making 40-plus saves a night. We had some holes that we needed to fix. There were some flaws in our process but our goaltending was lights out.”

“Right now our goaltending is very good but we've fixed those holes. We needed to shore up some areas defensively, not give up as many shots, get pucks in the offensive zone and play our style of hockey. We were looking at results but not the process before. Now, even over our last eight games, our process has been outstanding.”

The Colonials went 4-2-2 over their final eight regular-season games and finished 18-12-4 overall and 13-11-3 for fifth place in the AHA, two points behind fourth-place Connecticut.

Sacred Heart ended up 2-28-4 overall and 2-21-4 and last in the AHA, but managed a 2-2-2 mark through its last regular-season games.

Sacred Heart is apparently also playing its best hockey when they hockey matters the most.

The teams met Feb. 1-2 at the Island Sports Center and the Colonials skated away with 6-3 and 7-4 victories.

To keep rolling in this season's first round Schooley is counting upon his team recalling a lesson learned in the first round a year ago.

RMU hosted American International in a 7-10 matchup having won more than twice as many games overall (17) and in the AHA (13) as AIC (eight wins overall, six in conference). But the Colonials still had to go to overtime of the third game before surviving and advancing.

“I wouldn't say we didn't respect the opponent, but we didn't respect the playoffs as much as we should have,” Schooley said. “We wanted it to be easy and we were worried about the next round instead of what was in front of us.”

The Colonials talked about as much as a team on Monday and have been locked in ever since.

“We've done a good job this week of worrying about Friday night and not Saturday or Sunday or the next round,” Schooley said.

Connecticut (17-13-4, 14-10-3) would be next in a best-of-three series at Connecticut should RMU advance past Sacred Heart.

It also appears the Colonials are going to have to keep surviving and advancing through the AHA Championship Game to reach the NCAA Tournament.

In the wake of RMU's PairWise ranking falling to No. 21 nationally following a couple of regular-season ending ties with Mercyhurst (3-3 and 1-1), it's unlikely Robert Morris would have a chance at an at-large invitation should it fail to secure the AHA's automatic bid.

The RMU response is that the mathematics of such an equation will take care of itself.

It's up to the Colonials, meanwhile, to take care of business.

And the all-business approach they're taking into Game 1 against Sacred Heart doesn't extend beyond Game 1 against Sacred Heart.

“We're not looking at anything other than Friday night,” Schooley said. “We need to win on Friday night and then worry about Saturday.”