Men's Hockey | 11/16/2019 7:38:00 PM
Box Score WALTHAM, Mass. -- A three-goal third period Saturday evening pushed the
Robert Morris University men's hockey team to its fifth straight Atlantic Hockey victory, 4-2 over frequent foe Bentley. The first-place Colonials have won four in a row overall and sit atop the 11-team conference for the second straight week.
Freshman
Santeri Hartikainen and sophomore
Aidan Spellacy scored six minutes apart in Saturday's third period to break open a 1-1 game and propel the Colonials (7-4-0, 7-1-0 AHA) to their sixth consecutive win over the Falcons and their fourth in a row at Bentley Arena.Â
Earning six of a possible six points on the road is impressive on its face, but even more so when considering that RMU ended the night with three defensemen unavailable: Sophomore
Geoff Lawson missed the game due to illness, while junior
Nick Jenny and senior
Sean Giles were lost during the action due to injuries. Throw in 15 combined minor penalties and the ninth RMU-Bentley matchup of 2019 wasn't the smoothest.
"Anytime you get six points on the road, you're ecstatic," head coach
Derek Schooley said. "We did a great job with a next-man-up mentality to win an ugly, greasy hockey game. A lot of guys stepped up and played some big minutes."
Freshman
Bradley Stonnell and sophomore
Aiden Beck both had to take on more ice time than expected Saturday, with Stonnell picking up his second assist of the weekend and Beck acclimating well to his first game on the blue line as an NCAA skater.Â
Up front, sophomore
Grant Hebert had two assists, while seniors
Jacob Coleman and
Michael Coyne also added goals as RMU has built its second-best AHA start in its 10 seasons in the league. Only the 2014-15 regular-season league champs (7-0-1) broke out of the gate better in AHA action than this year's team.
"It's a good start, but we're aware it's just a start," said Spellacy, who added an assist for his second multi-point game of the season. "We need to keep building and continue to do the things that have made us successful so far."
Although RMU scored four goals for the fourth straight game, defense was as much responsible for this win as anything else. The Colonials conceded just 17 shots on goal, a season low by 10, so senior goalie
Justin Kapelmaster could register his seventh RMU victory with a mere 15 stops -- a welcomed development considering he, too, was questionable with an illness before the game.
"I think we did a good job of having good stick positioning," Spellacy said. "We kept them to the perimeter to keep them out of the high-percentage scoring areas. We went stick-on-puck and got deflections and blocked shots."
The only shot to get past Kapelmaster was a slap shot by Connor Brassard during a Bentley power play late in the second period, a rip that rang the right post after soaring through traffic. That gave the Falcons (3-8-0, 2-7-0 AHA) their lone PP conversion in six tries. Brassard countered Coleman's skate-blade redirect of Hebert's centering pass; Coleman's fourth goal of the season stretched his point streak to a career-best seven.
The game was up for grabs entering the third, but Hartikainen answered with a sizzling blast of his own at 10:04.
Justin Addamo's pass from the corner tipped off a referee's skate and right into Hartikainen's wheelhouse. The Finnish-born first-year forward nailed his spot to give RMU its second and final lead of the night.
"He's a good two-way forward who can shoot the puck and bring energy," Schooley said of Hartikainen, who has both of his RMU goals from a similar distance and position on the ice. "He can play up and down the lineup."
A major checking-from-behind penalty to Bentley's Luke Santerno with 5:35 left put RMU even more in command. The Colonials had misfired on their first eight opportunities -- including a pair of two-man advantages -- but they cashed in on their ninth when Spellacy steered Hebert's one-timer behind Falcons goalie Fraser Kirk with four minutes to go.
Bentley had a quick answer for Spellacy's third power-play goal of the year, courtesy of Matt Gosiewski's short-handed drive to the net. But RMU played keep-away well enough from there to drain the rest of Santerno's penalty time and force the Falcons to pull Kirk.Â
Coyne had the capper for the two-win weekend when he saucered in an empty-netter with two seconds remaining. Once again, a game against Bentley came down to the final minute, but the Colonials improved to 6-3 in the calendar year against the Falcons, including a 4-0 mark this season.
On a night when nearly half the game was played with one team or the other short-handed, the Colonials had pressed on to find their own rhythm.
"We struggled on the power play," Schooley assessed. "But our penalty kill was very good."
Fresh off their first road sweep of 2019-20, the Colonials will return home to the RMU Island Sports Center for a pair of home games against Air Force next weekend. Faceoffs are set for 7:05 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 22 and Saturday, Nov. 23.
Tickets will be available for $1 apiece for both games for anyone who brings five non-perishable food items to benefit the
Colonials Fight Hunger initiative.
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