(Photo: Gabrielle Mercer/WCSN)
The results of this past weekend did not go how Arizona State wanted. Back-to-back losses to No. 9 Notre Dame don’t look good in the standings, but it’s not all bad news.
Despite the Sun Devils’ 0-2-0 record, head coach Greg Powers is looking forward to the next slate of games and feels like they are in good shape going into a pair of home contests against Air Force.
“It’s just nice to be home and have these guys sleep in their own bed and have some familiarity,” Powers said. “The guys are in so much better shape, they are so much better prepared. We feel so much better about where we are this year at 0-2 than last year at 1-1 because of who we played and how we played.”
Last year, it seemed as if the Sun Devils took road trip after road trip, making it difficult to gain any sort of familiarity at home. The tough schedule also didn’t allow much rest. However, this season is a different story. ASU has about an even number of home and road games over the first half of the season, making the travel schedule more accommodating.
Powers saw how battle-ready his team was after it put up a valiant fight on Saturday night against the Fighting Irish, a game he feels his squad should have won.
“Saturday’s game we can take and evaluate and build off of,” he said. “It was a great effort. We feel like we should have had the lead going into the third period. Our guys played a really good team going down to the wire.”
An abundance of penalties was the main cause for why ASU was blown out on Friday, a game that Powers has already discarded. He said that Joey Daccord’s performance should not be criticized because of the amount of 5-on-3’s he faced, making it increasingly tough for him in net.
The goaltender situation is one that is still fluid as of now. Daccord and Robert Levin got starts in South Bend, but don’t be surprised to see Ryland Pashovitz, who started the majority of games in goal last season, work his way into the mix.
“Pash is right there,” Powers said. “We kept him back to work with George (Bosak), our goaltending coach. He struggled the first month, but we all know what he can do. We saw how good he played when he was on his game last year. He’s a big part of our program. Right now it’s wide open. Rob obviously played tremendous on Saturday, but we have two young kids that we are going to have to develop and play.”
No matter who the Devils have back there, Powers has the utmost confidence in his team not just for this weekend, but in every game going forward.
“Anybody that comes in here we think is a winnable game. We expect to win. We go into every game expecting to win, we went into Notre Dame expecting to win. That’s our goal: to give ourselves a chance to compete and get a win every night. We gave ourselves a chance and now through those efforts we will learn how to win a game.”
