Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley has seen his teams execute turnarounds before.
Midway through the 2013-14 season, the Colonials were 2-12-2 and in last place in Atlantic Hockey. But the team reset during the holiday break and closed out with a 14-6-3 run that included a conference playoff title and a trip to the NCAA tournament.
In that case, sticks were burned and words were said.
This season somewhat mirrored that one 12 years ago. The Colonials were 4-15-3 on Jan. 16 and mired at the bottom third of the standings. But they’ve turned things around since, going 9-3 and ending the regular season in third place. RMU will host No. 7 seed Air Force this weekend in a best-of-three quarterfinal series.
Schooley was mum about what actions were taken this time around that resulted in the dramatic shift.
“I’m not going to say that we did that again, but I’m not going to say that we didn’t do anything,” he said. “We tried to make our mindset different, and we did.
“You can only do it with teams that you feel like have a legitimate shot, and we needed a reset. So we did do some things to kind of reset us and reset our goals and reset individual performance goals. Not as famous as (burning our sticks) but you sometimes go into your bag of tricks.”
According to co-captains Michael Craig and Cameron Garvey, the team showed signs of success early in the season, but not enough to string together wins.
“We had our moments in the first half where we were playing well and maybe didn’t necessarily walk away with any points,” said Craig, a junior defenseman. “But in the second half, we’ve just found ways to collect those points.
“Maybe a few strategic things here and there have helped us along the way, but we’ve been winning games in a lot of different ways.”
“The first half of the season didn’t really go our way,” said Garvey, a junior forward. “We were kind of fighting it a little bit, had some unfortunate bounces or small mistakes that cost us some games.
“We had a good reset over Christmas break. It was nice to get some time off, and I think everybody came back kind of motivated, and Derek really wanted us to just have a fresh start, and I think everyone bought into that that whole identity of ‘let’s restart and see where it takes us’, and I think after Christmas, we looked completely different.”
“We didn’t get the job done non-conference,” said Schooley. “Obviously starting out (with) Michigan and Notre Dame was a challenge, but we caught Lindenwood and Long Island when they were on massive streaks.
“We didn’t play a lot of conference games right off the bat. We caught teams at the wrong time. We didn’t play as well as we needed to play to deserve to win. We were finding ways to lose games. I think we only got one of 12 points against RIT. And since January 9th when we played RIT actually, we found ways to start getting points every weekend. That was the key, just start accumulating points every weekend. And we didn’t go a weekend without getting a point in the second half, which was a great testament to our players.”
Garvey said that the big change for his team was mostly mental.
“We changed a few things in our system, a couple minor tweaks, which ended up helping us for sure,” he said. “But in the second half, I feel like we believed in each other more. We believed in the process, we believed in the group, and when you start to see a few wins, it kind of snowballs, and unlike the first half, it snowballed in the right direction.”
The Colonials also suffered some key injuries throughout the season. Craig was out of 14 games, just returning last weekend. Rookie goaltender Charlie Schenkel, who has seen the most time in net, was out for a couple of weeks.
But others picked up the slack, and that made RMU even stronger.
“Schenkel was injured with about four minutes to go in the RIT game (on Jan. 10),” said Schooley. “And we had to have guys step up. “(Sophomore goalie) Lucas Massie ended up splitting with Charlie all the way until this past weekend. (Fellow sophomore goaltender) Croix Kochendorfer played some important games for us and has come in a relief a couple of times.
“We had to find ways to get points and Lucas Massie did a great job. He had two shutouts, had a couple one nothing wins, which pushed Charlie to be better. Croix pushed both of them to be better. For Charlie, this (past weekend against Mercyhurst) is the first weekend that he’s played both games since that RIT series because he was hurt.”
Scoring took a hit early due to injuries as well.
“Tanner (Klimpke) Cameron and (Jackson) Reineke have been our three leading scorers, but, we’ve had some people step up. We lost Ryan Taylor (transferred from Clarkson after 38 points in three seasons) in the first Sacred Heart game (Dec. 30). He just came back this past weekend. We lost Michael Craig in the second Sacred Heart game (Jan. 3). He just came back. So, Ryan Taylor was our leading scorer at the time, and Michael Craig was second on our team in scoring. So they were key components and other people just stepped up in their absence. Michael Felsink’s had a good second half of the year. Clemke, Garvey, and Reineke, our top line’s been really good, but Dominic Elliott’s really stepped up, and then you’ve got other guys like John Babcock, Trent Wilson and George Krotiris and Bruce McDonald. Guys have just elevated their game because we were playing without two of our top guys.”
Robert Morris hosts Air Force this weekend, looking to make it to the semifinals for the first time since the school rebooted its program three years ago after abruptly canceling men’s and women’s hockey in 2021.
Last year, Air Force ended RMU’s season with a 4-3 overtime win in Colorado Springs in the first round.
“They’ve got outstanding defensemen,” said Schooley. “(Chris) Hedden, (Nolan) Cunningham and (Will) Starling and you go down the list of really good defensemen. So we’ve got to make sure that we watch them joining the offense.
“They’ve got a really good top line, and they’ve got a goalie that’s really taken the ball and run with it in (Dominic) Wasik. So I think controlling their top guys and getting pucks and bodies in traffic to the net will be key.
“We had a good game with them last year, and they’re a challenging team to play,” said Craig. “We’re gonna prepare just like we would with any other team and respect our opponent and go out there and play hard.
“Given, the history of them beating us out there, we’ll be more amped up and looking forward to flipping the script this year.”
Garvey said that he hopes hosting this time will yield a different result.
“I know Air Force is a really good team,” he said. “We split with them earlier this year, so we kind of know what they’re all about and we definitely respect what they have going on over there. But having our fans and being comfortable at home will give us a boost, and it’s nice to not have to go across the country this time.”
A home quarterfinal series didn’t seem possible s few weeks ago, but the Colonials are a true dark horse in this season’s tournament.
“Our guys believe,” said Schooley. “We never lost belief, and we just needed some sort of reset and I felt that this team had the ability to do really good things. The credit goes to them because if they didn’t believe in our team, then we wouldn’t have had that ability to turn this around. But my job is just to guide them in the right direction, and they bought in tremendously.
“Now here we are diving into playoffs and what we did in the past doesn’t mean anything in the present. So we’ve got to put that behind us, and it’s a new season for everybody.”