(Photo: Gabrielle Mercer/WCSN)
ASU will battle the Princeton Tigers at Oceanside Ice Arena on Friday and Saturday in the team’s final home series of 2017.
The Sun Devils are taking the ice following a week off after the Thanksgiving holiday that concluded in the Devils’ first series win of the season. The Sun Devils came out on top in a 3-1 win over Holy Cross in game one with a 3-3 tie the following day.
Friday night’s win against Holy Cross was also ASU’s first official road win of the season. The Sun Devils will be skating onto the ice with a 3-8-3 record whereas the Tigers enter at 5-6-1.
“The last time we had a bye-week, we had a great week in practice and then came out and had our worse game of the year against Penn State,” ASU head coach Greg Powers said. “We were really flat so that can’t happen here.”
In the opening night against Penn State, the Sun Devils fell in a 7-0 loss to the Nittany Lions.
“We had our preparation, we were all ready to go and we just kinda came out Friday flat and unfocused,” ASU assistant captain Louie Rowe said. “I think our practice habits were really good leading up to that and our details were good so I think we need to come Friday more prepared.”
Powers said the team needs to be more disciplined and stay out of the box to find success against the Tigers.
The Sun Devils will be looking to play to their strength, which has given the team the 14th overall ranking on the penalty kill (84.4 percent) in the country.
Princeton follows suit of the Sun Devils with their 16th overall ranking as well (84.1 percent).
“We were successful last week,” ASU forward Dominic Garcia said. “What made us successful was playing to our identity so we’re going to continue to do that and force them to make the adjustments on us, especially in our home rink.”
While the Sun Devils find strength in being one-man down on the ice, they are shifting focus to improve when they have the power play advantage.
“That’s the one area of our game that’s really faltering right now,” Powers said. “It looks great in practice, for whatever reason it just hasn’t into the game so i think if we can pop a couple power play goals and win the special teams battle against a team like Princeton, who a has really good special teams, we’re going to be in real good shape.”
Both games of this series start at 7:05 p.m. at Oceanside Ice Arena in Tempe.
“We’re going to be nice and big and we’ve got them in our little barn so hopefully we can bottle them up as much as we can and see how it goes,” Powers said.
