Pittsburgh, Pa. - Robert Morris University men's hockey jumped out to an early lead and never looked back, as RMU landed its second win of the season with a 4-2 victory over Army West Point in its home opener at Colonials Arena.

The Colonials started hot with a pair of goals in the opening three minutes of the game. Junior defenseman Eric Israel took advantage of an early power play opportunity, as the Black Knights penalty kill surrendered its first power play goal of the season. The man-advantage goal marked the fifth of the season for RMU, putting the home team ahead 1-0 just 1:46 into the game. Junior Michael Louria and senior Timmy Moore assisted on the goal.

Just 53 seconds later, RMU was back at it. This time an even-strength tally by Lynch, his second of the season, to give Robert Morris a quick 2-0 lead. Spencer Dorowicz and Elias Ghantous chipped in the assists, just the seventh career point for the senior defenseman Ghantous.

Army pulled within one midway through the opening period when Tipper Higgins put his first goal of the season past sophomore goaltender Francis Marotte. 

The Colonials increased their lead to two with a shorthanded goal less than five minutes into the second. Senior forward Brady Ferguson jumped on a puck cleared out of the zone by Moore and skated up the ice, tossing it bar down over Army's Cole Bruns for his sixth career shorthanded strike, making it 3-1 RMU. Ferguson led the NCAA in shorthanded goals in the 2016-17 season with five.

Army once again made it a one-goal game when Michael Wilson flipped a backhander past Marotte, RMU holding onto a 3-2 lead.

Lynch wasn't done with the offense, cashing in at the end of an impressive shift with Dorowicz and sophomore forward Matthew Graham. All three forwards fired the puck on goal but it was finally a Dorowicz pass to Graham that rebounded out to Lynch that set him up to bury the fourth Colonials goal and cap the scoring with RMU ahead 4-2 after two.

"It was a great play by Spencer Dorowicz and Matt Graham there, it was 3-on-2, and Graham took the puck to the net and [the rebound] was just there for me," recalled Lynch.

After starting the game on a 14-2 run of shots on goal, RMU surrendered the shots total in the third period, as Army ended up with the eventual 41-36 advantage on shots. The Black Knights first 21 shots on goal in the third and Marotte was there to stop them all, including a terrific chance by Army's Brendan Soucie in the opening minute of the frame.

Marotte finished the night with 39 saves, the second-highest total of stops in his career, second to last season's 43-save Three Rivers Classic championship victory over a ranked Quinnipiac squad.

"It's a team game, we played really well" said Marotte. "Even though we gave up a ton of shots in the third period, we kind of kept them out, shots from the bue line. The ones I faced that were tougher, I made the saves on."

"We came out hard," said Dorowicz. "Scoring a couple quick goals really got us energized." 

"In the third, they came out hard, but we did what we had to do. We're not completely satisfied still. We want to come out and play a better third period tomorrow and a full sixty [minutes]."

Robert Morris (2-2-0, 2-2-0 AHC) will face off against Army West Point (2-1-0, 2-1-0 AHC) at 7:05pm Saturday night at Colonials Arena.

Postgame interviews with Lynch, Dorowicz and Marotte are below, on our Instagram, which you can follow here.
 

A post shared by Robert Morris Men's Hockey (@rmumhockey) on Oct 20, 2017 at 8:12pm PDT

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