By PAUL GOTHAM
HENRIETTA, N.Y. — Entering play Saturday night, one obvious deficiency appeared on the RIT Men’s Hockey team stat line: through six games, the Tigers had not scored on the power play.
All that changed seven minutes into the first period and by the end of the night, Wayne Wilson’s squad had scored on 2-of-5 power play opportunities.
“It was good to get a couple power play goals tonight,” Wilson said after RIT dropped a 4-3 decision to Colgate. “You kinda need one to get yourself situated.”
Tristan Allen used :13 seconds of the first man advantage to send a blast from the left point into the upper right corner.
“It was a good shot,” Wilson said. “Thirteen seconds, but it might be like 10 minutes and 13 seconds.”
Simon Isabelle connected late in the second period for RIT’s second power play goal of the night.
A season ago, the Tigers ranked 13th in the nation converting 24 percent (35-of-146) of the time with a man advantage. Of the first nine chances in 2024-25, Wilson’s squad had nothing to show for it.
For Wilson, it’s not so much his team’s lack of success with a man advantage, but it’s in the lack of those opportunities.
“The number of power plays we’ve had up to this weekend is probably the same number we would get in one game.
“You got to earn your power plays, too. You got to take pucks to the net, and have them haul you down and do things like that. Sometimes, a team with the most penalties is the team that’s playing the most time in their end.”
After surrendering a pair of leads in a 5-4 loss to Colgate on Friday, RIT was out shot 12-6 in the opening 20 minutes on Saturday and trailed 2-1.
Isabelle’s team-leading fifth goal tied the game at two heading into the second intermission.
Colgate’s Brett Chorske took a Reid Irwin pass along the right wing and scored :18 seconds into the third period.
Tanner Andrew tied the score less than two minutes later.
“Disappointed with the result tonight, but I’m much happier with our play,” Wilson said. “Last night we were just chasing the puck. Tonight, we made some plays. We had some good opportunities. Obviously, we had some glaring breakdowns too, but I thought it was a much better effort, and we’re heading in the right direction.”
Trent Burnham made 27 saves on the night including a 1v1 stop of Daniel Panetta midway through the second period and another of Alex DiPaolo off a two-on-O break with 7:44 remaining in the game to keep RIT within striking distance.
“Our goalies have been good,” Wilson said. “We just got to get some wins.”
RIT (2-5-0) heads to Niagara for a mid-week AHA game before heading to Bentley eight days later.
The Tigers have not yet had Matthew Wilde in lineup this season. The returning leading scorer (19 goals/16 assists/35 points) has been sidelined with an injury.
“We are using our lines as far as who’s healthy and able to play. We are trying to learn. We hope we can hit a week with some guys back in the lineup. We’ll see. I’m not saying that’s going to happen either, but we’re very close to it.”
Allen’s goal was the first of his career. Tyler Fukakusa and Xavier Lapointe assisted on the play. Allen and Dimitri Mikrogiannakis set up Isabelle’s marker. Tyler Mahan had an assist on Andrew’s goal.
RIT’s fifth power-play opportunity came with 5.5 seconds remaining in the game. Isabelle won the ensuing faceoff to Grady Hobbs who fired a shot from the left circle that Colgate netminder Andrew Takacs saved.
The game was played in front of an announced crowd of 2,857.
The weekend celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Gene Polisseni Center.
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