Colonials Crushed

That was certainly a much better weekend for the Penn State Icers than the previous weekend at Ohio.

The Icers took both games from the Robert Morris Colonials on the Olympic ice at the Island Sports Complex, with a 9-4 romp on Friday night and a 7-2 victory on Saturday afternoon.

Full credit to the Colonials for hanging tough through the first two periods of each game, but the Icers scored four times in both third periods to win going away.

There were a lot of positives and a couple of negatives from the weekend.  On the plus side:

• Shorthanded goals by Eric Steinour on Friday and Domenic Morrone on Saturday
• The revamped power play went 5 for 11 for the weekend, compared to 1 for 13 against Ohio
• Holding Bobby Mo to 3 power play goals on 17 chances in both games
• Solid goaltending from Dan Ivanir and Matthew Madrazo
• Hometown boys Tim O'Brien reaching 100 career goals and Chris Cerutti notching his 100th career point in Friday's win

Now, the negative side of the ledger:

• 17 power play opportunities for the Colonials in the two games.  I'll put some of the blame on some questionable calls, while Marek Polidor's 5-minute majors (his 2nd and 3rd in the past 5 games) added to the numbers
• Taylor Cera's separated shoulder suffered on his first shift on Friday night.  With Eric Steinour, along with Tim O'Brien and coach Scott Balboni, gone for the next three weeks with the World University Games team, Taylor's absence will be a huge void to fill.

As I said in Saturday's wrap up, I think the sweep should keep the Icers at or near the 10th spot in the next rankings, which will come out on Friday as the Icers take on West Chester in a home-and-home series.

By all accounts, the revamped Golden Rams squad is a much different team than the one the Icers swept 5-3 and 10-3 in the first meetings of the teams in November.

According to the ACHA Twitter page, West Chester on Friday needed overtime  to beat Drexel 4-3 before thumping Towson 10-1 on Saturday.