PHOTOS BY ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY | JUSTIN BERL

Admittedly, there were “tears of joy” back in October, when Robert Morris hockey made it all the way back from what turned out to be a University-imposed, two-year stint in limbo and officially resurrected its program by hosting Bowling Green.

But when the Colonials subsequently made their long-awaited return to the postseason last Saturday night in Waltham, Mass. against Bentley, head coach Derek Schooley was much more focused than he was emotional.

“We’re way past that,” Schooley insisted. “We know we’ve been back and we’ve had that attitude.

“Hey, we’re thankful to be back but that was all about winning a hockey game.”

That’s not to suggest the game the Colonials won in the first round of the Atlantic Hockey Association’s postseason tournament wasn’t celebrated with gusto.

Freshman Cameron Garvey scored an out-of-nowhere goal with 10.1 seconds left in overtime and his teammates poured over the boards and mobbed the ultimate hero of a 4-3 thriller that advanced Robert Morris to a best-of-three, AHA quarterfinal series against No. 19 RIT Friday, Saturday and, if necessary, Sunday in Rochester, N.Y.

Just like old times.

The victory didn’t vindicate the massive efforts of so many who had resolutely refused to take no for an answer when the men’s and women’s programs were abruptly discontinued by the University following the 2020-21 season. That had been delivered the moment the puck dropped back on Oct. 7 on Neville Island.

But beating Bentley the way the Colonials did when they did it provided validation Schooley, his coaches and his players so richly deserved.

For RMU, the hard part was righting the wrong and getting the men’s and women’s programs reinstated after what wound up becoming a two-year hiatus.

The really hard part, as Schooley understood it would be all along, was turning a bunch of freshmen and a bunch of transfers from all across the NCAA landscape into a team.

RMU struggled to score goals and win games initially. The Colonials endured a 10-game stretch from Nov. 10 through Dec. 2 in which they didn’t win a single game (0-9-1).

The regular season opened with the Colonials picked to finish 10th in a poll of AHA coaches and with the players insisting they weren’t a 10th-place team.

It ended with RMU finishing 11th, dead last, and with an overall record of 10-23-3.

Yet as bumpy as the ride became at times, the players and coaches never tired of working to get better, individually and collectively.

RMU became a different team in the second half of the season, not a massively more successful team but a much more competitive and entertaining one.

Respectable if not rewarding losses by counts of 4-2 and 4-1 at then-No. 12 Minnesota in mid-January hinted, in retrospect, of the transformation that was taking place.

The Colonials eventually departed for Bentley as the worst team in their conference, but also as a team with confidence, and a grasp of how to embrace the playoff-hockey mindset that had helped RMU consistently beat ranked opponents and compete for regular-season championships and NCAA Tournament berths before the program was unimaginably shut down.

“Every play matters,” Schooley emphasized. “Every clear, every back-check, I think our guys sold out in doing that, blocking shots and back-checking and doing everything we needed to do to survive and advance.”

In doing so, the Colonials turned a feel-good story into a feel-great story.

“It was fun for our guys to experience success and building for the future and continuing to get better,” Schooley said. “We took the attitude of ‘why not us?’

“Here we are, continuing to play.”