By Stephen Sklar
Photo taken by David Herman (@Dhermsphoto)
SYRACUSE, NY– Syracuse (8-13-1) is back from its trip down to Drexel last weekend and is set to take on Robert Morris (11-9-0) in the Salt City. On Friday night, Tennity Ice Pavilion should be packed with fans eager to cheer on the Orange for the first time since November 19th, when SU downed URI, 2-1. Come Saturday night, however, Upstate Medical Arena at the Oncenter War Memorial, home of the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch, in downtown Syracuse is where game 2 of the weekend is set to take place.
The Orange started this week of practice with a run on the ice at the War Memorial in preparation for this weekend’s game.
Saturday’s game should be an electric atmosphere for both teams. The War Memorial seats 7,000 attendees and is a more centralized location than the TIP. The Orange are already looking forward to this game, but have to get through the opening game of the two-game set first.
No matter where the game is played, the objective ahead of Syracuse remains the same: win games. SU’s already done that once since returning from the long winter break, in a 3-2 overtime win against Drexel last weekend.
In that contest, defense Connor Chesner almost singlehandedly willed SU to a win with a two-goal performance. After the game, he made it clear that playing good hockey is of the utmost importance, especially at this point in the season.
“We know that this last stretch of games will be hard but we know what we need to do,” he said. “Once playoffs come around anything can happen. That’s our mentality. It doesn’t matter what seed we are in playoffs we just want to hit our stride at the right moment and it seems like we are clicking at the right time.”
The competition gets a little tougher this weekend against a Robert Morris team that won three of its last five games to end 2022, and already opened up the new year with a win over RIT.
The Colonials feature two premiere goal scorers in Roman Kraemer and Justin Adamski, who each have 22 goals on the season. Kraemer, who is currently 5th in the country in scoring (22-23-45) , played 2 seasons with RMU's NCAA Division I team before landing in the ACHA. The Colonials next closest goal scorer, however, is Nathan Micket at just 12 goals the entire season.
Keeping their top two weapons in check this weekend won’t be an easy task for SU, but it’s imperative if they wish to take even just one game from Robert Morris. By limiting the offense that these two forwards provide, Syracuse could put itself in a position to pull off the upset.
Both games will be streamed live on the SU Hockey Network. Both games, including tomorrow's matinee at Upstate Medical University Arena, are free to attend.
Contact me
E-mail: sasklar@syr.edu
Twitter: @StephenASklar