Former Pittsburgh Penguin Ryan Malone didn’t play college hockey for Robert Morris. He played at St. Cloud State.

Colby Armstrong, another former Penguin, didn’t play college hockey at all. He played junior hockey in Red Deer.

Brett Keisel and Shaun Suisham played football for the Steelers. And Neil Walker was a baseball player for the Pirates.

But here they all were together in a locker room at the RMU Island Sports Center, peeling off their hockey equipment at 1:45 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon after shooting a hype video to boost fundraising efforts to save the Robert Morris hockey teams.

In May, coming off successful seasons, the men’s and women’s teams were cut without any warning by Robert Morris President Chris Howard and the school’s board of trustees. After weeks of public outcry and backlash over the process, the programs were given a partial reprieve if they could reach a fundraising goal of $1.4 million in cash for this year, with tracking toward an additional $1.4 million in pledges moving forward.

Many of those aforementioned skaters — along with the “On The Bench” crew and Olympic silver medalist Brianne McLaughlin-Bittle (RMU, ‘09) — had just participated in a celebrity hockey game held at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry two weeks earlier.

The Colonials teams are more than halfway to their goal with an announced deadline of Dec. 15 looming.

“We’re down by 700,000 goals, and we’re heading into the third period,” Malone said. “It’s going to be the greatest comeback in Pittsburgh sports history. That’s why we needed the hype video to get us going.”

Malone — who has been flying in from Florida to help spearhead the cause — is also organizing a bubble hockey tournament (“The Yinzer Cup”) to be held Saturday at 31 Bar & Grille, owned by another former Penguin, Ken Wregget.

The injection of support from “On the Bench” and the local Pittsburgh athletes has been an added layer of support for the Pittsburgh College Hockey Foundation, organized as an entity to streamline fundraising efforts and counsel for the displaced players, particularly those who couldn’t find new places to play in this fall.

Suddenly, it’s not just about the former Colonials pleading to get their programs back. It’s more of an across-the-board Pittsburgh sports community pressure on the school’s administration to reverse its decision.

For Malone, a former Penguin who grew up in Upper St. Clair, joining the reinstatement efforts seems to be about helping his sport in his hometown. For Armstrong, it’s about knowing a friend whose son was supposed to start playing hockey at Robert Morris and found out that the program got cut shortly after he declared.

For Suisham, it’s about daughters he coaches for Pens Elite who no longer have the potential of playing college hockey close to home. Keisel has kids who play the sport as well.

For Walker — who grew up in the North Hills playing any sport there was to play — there’s sympathy for any college-level athlete who could have their team ripped away like that.

“What’s that old saying? When you play Pittsburgh, you play the whole city,” Malone said, remembering the old Howard Cosell line.

Now it’s just a matter of convincing Howard and his supporters on the RMU board to care as much about their student-athletes as people who really have no tangible connection to the university, aside from the threads of simply being part of the fabric of Pittsburgh sports.

Or, at least raising enough money to buy a change of heart from them.

And a second chance for the programs.

Listen: You can hear the full interview with Ryan Malone here.

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