Returning to Neville Island, the RMU ACHA DI club hockey team took on the Indiana University Crimson Hawks Friday night in the first of two league games of the weekend. RMU’s freshmen came up strong, downing IUP, 2-0.

And the team made some lineup changes Friday night due to illnesses and an injury to Eddie Sarin. The senior forward was hurt last weekend in the Colonials’ 2-0 victory against Indiana University and underwent surgery earlier this week on his wrist.

“There’s a little bit of leadership there, some seniors who are down (Sarin and Zach Barto, shoulder),” Cam Zappi said. “But we have a lot of freshmen this year that are willing to set up and take on the challenge, take on the challenge, and we have a lot of talent there. We miss them but we were able to fill their spots.”

Two penalties from Alex Dagnal, as well as two power play opportunities would be the only action seen in the first period.

The second frame would prove to be an eventful period for the team as freshman forward Cassidy Galleone captured his first goal of the season and put RMU up 1-0 with just under five-minutes remaining in the second.

However the club would be without starting goaltender Ryan Gayso for the remainder of the game. After a battle in front of the net, Gayso went to flip the puck to a ref, which accidently hit him in the process. Gayso was replaced with Sean Scannell, when assigned a 10 minute misconduct at 3:10.

At 16:17 the Hawks would be sent to the box and less than a minute into the power play RMU would find the back of the net for the second time that night.

Dagnal was awarded the goal at 15:34, but the goal was later switched to Randy Unger, who was surprised at the puck finding its way in in the first place.

“I walked out the corner on the power play and I just took a shot because I was waiting for Dags to get open,” Unger said. “But he didn’t so I just shot on net and I think it just went through is legs, I couldn’t really tell.”

Despite the win tonight, the team looks to improve and build off of last night’s victory heading into tomorrow’s game.

“We just got to clean it up, it was sloppy today,” Dagnal said. “We got to get better passes and everybody needs to work as a group.”

Before tomorrow game the team will be hosting an alumni game at 6:00 p.m., followed by the team’s match up against the University of Pittsburgh.