(Photo: Gabrielle Mercer/WCSN)
Arizona State will play in its eighth and ninth games away from home this weekend when the team travels to Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. to face the Lake Superior State Lakers.
The team has dropped its last five road games, something head coach Greg Powers isn’t surprised by given the degree of difficulty that comes with playing on the road.
“We look at it as an opportunity to go out and get great experience,” Powers said. “It’s hard to win on the road in college hockey, you look at the box [scores] every weekend and the road team rarely wins, doesn’t matter who it is.”
Nevertheless, the Devils will look to buck the trend after an entire week off, two weeks removed from the two game sweep at the hands of Wisconsin. According to Powers, practice hasn’t been light throughout the week, yet, the team is in a great place mentally.
Additionally, the team has placed an emphasis on bettering special teams and capitalizing on the power play leading up to the road series. While the Sun Devils are ranked No. 11 in the nation in power play efficiency, having capitalized on nine of their 37 opportunities, eight of those conversions came against Southern New Hampshire on Oct. 23 and 24.
“We don’t like where we are on special teams,” Powers said. “When you look at our season statistics they’re a little misleading, most of our success has come against teams we don’t need to be successful on special teams to beat.
“We have to be successful on special teams to beat other Division I programs and we need to get better on it.”
Furthermore, the team has struggled maintaining a strong pace out of the gate. So far this season, the Devils have looked unsure when starting a series and have taken longer than they should to get going.
Through six road games, the Devils have yet to score in the first period.
“What we want to do is play 60 minutes like we played the last 40 in Wisconsin, if we do we will be in good shape,” Powers said. “We need to quit going into Fridays in feel-it-out mode, which is what we’ve been doing with a young team.
“They kind of see the pace and adjust instead of dictating the pace.”
Freshman Jordan Masters leads the team in points, and as always, will be someone to watch throughout the Lake Superior State series.
“It’s definitely going to be a battle, every team in college hockey is a good team, if you take one night off, you’re going to lose,” Masters said. “I think we just had a pretty good go with Wisconsin two weeks ago, the last two periods we played with them was a really good period as a team, so I think we need that to transition into this weekend.”
The Devils are due to make a statement on the road; however, that will only happen if they correct the two aforementioned issues that have lingered over their heads all season. The LSSU series will be pivotal for this team’s development and these two games in Michigan will prove whether or not this team understands what it’s going to take to right the ship.
“The experience that this young team is getting is unbelievable,” Powers said. “We’re just going to embrace it and use it to our advantage when it matters most here after we’ve built this thing.”
You can contact Colton Dodgson via e-mail or on Twitter @DodgsonColton
