Playing in front of a raucous crowd of 962 in their first-ever home game, Robert Morris fell one goal short in their comeback effort as they lost to Canisius College, 5-4, at the RMU Island Sports Center on Saturday night.
Freshman Brett Hopfe recorded the first hat-trick in Colonial history as he scored twice in the first period and again in the third.
Freshmen Jace Buzek and David Boguslawski each had two assists in the game. The Colonials fall to 1-1-0 on the season after upsetting the Golden Griffs, 3-1, in their first-ever game on Friday.
In a first period marred by 15 penalties for 41 total minutes, the teams managed five goals, three of which came with the man advantage. Canisius struck first on a Michael Cohen power-play score with assists from Matt Ruberto and Tim Songin just 2:10 into the game.
The Colonials answered with the next three goals. Hopfe netted a five-on-three power-play goal at 3:41 followed by a Joey Olson goal at 6:26 and another Hopfe score at 10:13.
Canisius scored the next four goals, first cutting the lead to 3-2 with a power-play goal by Songin at 11:20 of the first period. Billy Irish-Baker scored at 5:38 of the second on assist from David Ovcjak and Andrew Dawe. Joel Kitchen gave the Griffs the lead, 4-3 at 15:17 with a power-play score on assists from Songin and Andrew Dawe.
Dawe then scored his own 12:58 into the third period with help from Michael Cohen and Matt Ruberto.
Hopfe finished his hat trick with his second power-play goal of the game at 17:14 to make it 5-4. The Colonials pulled freshman goalie Christian Boucher for the extra-skater with 43 seconds left to play but couldn’t find the equalizer.
