It took five different goal scorers, a solid goaltending performance, and an overall gutsy effort to get the job done. At the end of six periods of hockey, the Robert Morris Colonials found themselves in possession of a weekend sweep of the visiting Bentley Falcons assisted by a balanced scoring attack and a 33-save shutout performance from goaltender Terry Shafer.
“I don’t think we had our “A’ game; I think we were a little fatigued with six games in 12 days,” Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley said. “We had a B+ game and an A+ effort and determination. We gutted through it and we got solid goaltending. Terry didn’t have to be outstanding, but he gave us solid, capable goaltending tonight. I think they ran out of gas before we did tonight.”
Two key factors helped he Falcons avoid the early deficit that saw them go down two goals early on Friday night as they kept the Colonials out of the prime scoring areas early on while starting goaltender Jayson Argue stopped all 13 shots he faced in the first period.
The Bentley penalty kill also turned around the performance from the previous evening by thwarting two Colonials power plays in the opening frame. The two teams then carried over the scoreless play into a stoppage-filled second period that saw both teams blocking shots while giving little in the way of rebounds or loose pucks to convert into scoring chances.
As the game approached the halfway mark, an unlikely goal-scorer put the Colonials on the scoreboard first, as defenseman Rob Mann put a picture-perfect backhanded pass from David Friedmann past Argue for his first goal of the season.
The game then opened up, as both Argue and Shafer kept good scoring chances out of the net until the waning moments of play when Zac Lynch finished a two-on-one with fellow linemate Greg Gibson at the 19:25 mark to put the Colonials up by two heading into the dressing room.
The second unlikely Colonials goal scorer then put his name on the score sheet when defenseman Alex Bontje took a pass from Brandon Denham down the left wing boards, where he cut to the front of the net and slipped a puck past Argue that appeared to have been stopped initially, but snuck over the goal line.
“Those are guys that don’t contribute a lot offensively, they’re not known for their offensive prowess and it really lifts your team when you get goals from guys like that,” Schooley said. “When you don’t have your “A” game, you’ve got to get contributions from everybody and those are big goals that they got for us.
Colonials forwards Brady Ferguson and Daniel Leavens closed out the scoring with goals at 6:08 and 19:33 respectively. The win saw the Falcons fail to come out of a two-game road series without a point for the first time since the 2012-2013 season.
“It turned on us halfway through the game tonight,” Bentley coach Ryan Soderquist said. “It’s a 60-minute game and we did well with our game plan coming into tonight. Our penalty kill looked a lot better and overall we looked a lot sharper and then it just fell apart. We’ve been battling some consistency issues lately and it showed.
“Robert Morris is an extremely well coached team and they played a full 60 minutes and that’s why we lost. We’re going to take a good lesson out of here. They taught us how to play hockey and we can either go to school on how they’re playing right now and figure it out for ourselves or we’re in for a long second half of the season.”
The Colonials head to Holy Cross for two games next Friday and Saturday, while the Falcons play host to the Rochester Institute of Technology.
