(Photo: Gabrielle Mercer/WCSN)
The regular season gets underway for Arizona State with the first puck drop Friday night against UMass- Amherst.
After a successful 4-1 win in Friday’s exhibition game against NAIT, the Sun Devils are going into this weekend’s matchup quite confident.
“We want to win in this building,” alternate captain Louie Rowe said. “No matter what it takes, when we come into Oceanside, we want to make the fans happy. We want them to leave happy,”
Although last season the Sun Devils were able to get their first collegiate sweep against the Minutemen, the team isn’t relying on that experience to help them in this season’s new approach. With 13 freshmen on the roster, UMass has an almost entirely new team. If the Sun Devils want a win, they won’t be able to rely as much on the past and what they have learned during a prior matchup due to most of the players being new and most of their previous competitors no longer being there.
“Looking at their team from this year, they kind of went through a culture change,” forward Dylan Hollman said. “They got a new coach, I don’t know if it was this year or the year before. I kind of look at it like they are where we were last year, where they are trying to build that culture so they are going to be a team that’s hungry. I know they have some high profile kids coming in looking to prove themselves in their first college game this weekend.”
The Sun Devils are opening the season with a tough competitor. Neutralzone.net ranked the Minutemen third in this season’s recruiting class. Their roster includes freshman defenseman Cale Makar, who this year was drafted by the Colorado Avalanche in the first round (fourth overall) of the NHL Entry Draft.
“We just have to shut those guys down and we’ll be fine,” forward Anthony Croston said. “ We have to stick to our systems and we’ll be fine and pull out a couple wins hopefully.”
One of the Sun Devils main area of focus for this past summer has been tightening up their lines in the event of a power play. Most of the Sun Devils goals against were scored during a penalty kill and in order to ensure their success, a big key is going to be finding that strength on the ice and using that extra man to their advantage. Since they now have more practice time on the ice, the Sun Devils are now able to spend more time focusing on strengthening areas of play versus rushing through them in 40 minutes of ice time.
“We’ve done a lot of battling,” said Hollman. “We understand how important it is to get in the game situation so these last couple of days we’ve done a lot of small area games and we’ve done some work on the power play. Those are some areas we established we need to work on for this weekend.”
Both Friday and Saturday’s games start at 7:05 PM at Oceanside Ice Arena in Tempe.
