PITTSBURGH -- Another former Colonial will dig his skates into National Hockey League ice Tuesday night, as Robert Morris University men's hockey alumnus Brandon Blandina has been tabbed to referee a Red Wings-Rangers game at New York's Madison Square Garden, per an announcement from the NHL Officials Association.

Blandina will join fellow Class of 2012 forward Furman South as RMU alums who have officiated NHL games. The Sewickley-raised South made his NHL debut last April and had refereed 38 regular-season games as of the start of the month, including a few involving the Pittsburgh Penguins.
 

Referee Brandon Blandina To Make NHL Debut at Rangers/Wings https://t.co/sjDkEW1oil pic.twitter.com/FDLU584uH5

— Scouting The Refs (@ScoutingTheRefs) March 19, 2019

Both men are part of a younger wave of NHL officials helped along by the NHL Officials Exposure Combine, held every offseason since 2012. The program is intended to help former high-level players develop at a faster pace, as evidenced by the quick rise of the Colorado native Blandina, 27, and the 30-year-old South.

"With their elite hockey sense, Brandon and Furman have the ability at making refereeing a career for a long time," said RMU head coach Derek Schooley. "We couldn't be happier for them."

Blandina was officially hired to a minor-league contract by the NHL last summer, making him eligible for this 'call-up.' Previous to that, he had officiated games at the youth, junior and minor-pro level over the past three years.

"I am really proud of Brandon," Schooley said. "He put a lot of work into becoming a high-level official in a short amount of time."

Blandina has stayed involved with the game in other ways, too, serving as a volunteer assistant coach with RMU in 2016-17 and also running his Elite Strides Hockey training center out of the second floor of the Island Sports Center.

For more information on the RMU men's hockey program, now in its 15th season of Division I play, visit RMUColonials.com. The Colonials will compete in their sixth consecutive Atlantic Hockey semifinal this Friday afternoon, when they take on American International at HarborCenter in Buffalo, N.Y. 

The winner of the Atlantic Hockey tournament receives an automatic bid to the 16-team NCAA tournament, which starts next week. RMU, which is on a 6-1-1 run, has appeared in four of the last five Atlantic Hockey title games, winning it in 2014.