Veteran sportswriter, member of the WDVE Morning Show and hockey aficionado Mike Prisuta has been covering the Pittsburgh sports scene for over 20 years. He has covered Pittsburgh sports as a reporter for the Beaver County Timesand as a columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and has had his pulse on the happenings of each of the professional organizations and college programs in the area. A graduate of Michigan State University, Prisuta got his start in the profession covering the Spartan hockey program and possesses knowledge of the college hockey world unmatched in the region.

Throughout the 2011-12 season, Prisuta will serve up weekly stories surrounding Colonial hockey as well as the latest notes and news around college hockey.

Prisuta on Pucks: Extra Effort Leads to Goals

From Derek Schooley's lips to the back of the net.

RMU's head coach had talked in the wake of a 2-0, 2-0 split with American International about the need for the Colonials to convert more often on the chances they had been generating. The plan, Schooley outlined, would be for the players to work on finishing in advance of last Friday night's Atlantic Hockey Association game at Mercyhurst.

It was a pretty good plan, as it turned out.

Robert Morris improved its records to 4-6-0 overall and 2-2-0 in the AHA with a 4-3 victory.

“That was only the second time we've scored over two goals,” Schooley said. “We did a lot of extra work during the week. Credit our guys for putting the time in.

“We had a very good second period. We got pucks to the net, bodies to the net. We hit posts, the crossbar. We could have had six or eight goals. We had a very good second period.”

The Colonials scored all four of their goals at Mercyhurst in that second period, when they out-shot the Lakers, 21-10.

More encouraging yet was that three players scored their first goals of the season, senior forwards Nick Chiavetta and Cody Crichton and freshman forward Scott Jacklin (Chiavetta had two).

Jacklin's goal was his first at RMU.

Their performances personified the type of team-wide contributions Schooley is seeking this season.

“The nice thing is we didn't have to rely on the guys who had been putting up the numbers,” Schooley said. “We got contributions from other people.”

Since it worked so well heading into the Mercyhurst game the plan will remain in place this week even though the Colonials don't have a game.

RMU doesn't hit the ice again until Nov. 25-26, when it hosts Army at the Island Sports Center.

Between now and then Schooley will ask his players to continue putting in that extra time working on goal scoring.

“We're going to keep doing what we need to do to be successful,” Schooley said.

Much of that involves individual work after practice, or players working with a teammate and/or an assistant coach on little things such as driving to the net, knocking a puck out of the air toward the net or collecting a rebound off a goaltender's pads.

“We have to get ugly, greasy goals,” Schooley said. “All of our goals (at Mercyhurst) came from inside the blue area (the crease) or from inside the hash marks; nothing was worth sending to SportsCenter for the Top Plays of the Week.

“We have to work hard and be determined around the net. Nothing will come easy and we'll have to earn everything we get. And we can't look at one player to carry the team; it has to be everybody as a group.

“We're going to continue to work on shooting and scoring, on individual skills. We're going to have to continue to do that because we're not going to fix it over night. We have to be good at all the little things and know where we have to go to score goals, and that's the blue paint.”