ASU Men’s Hockey: After sweep of AIC, Sun Devils move closer to locking up NCAA Tournament spot

(Photo: Riley Trujillo/WCSN)

At the end of his press conference late Saturday night, just minutes after Arizona State’s wild 5-4 overtime win against American International on senior night, Sun Devils coach Greg Powers offered one final cautiously optimistic line before leaving the mic.

“We’re still not there, yet,” he said, the team’s five seniors surrounding him at the podium. “But things are looking pretty good.”

In the seniors’ final home game ever, the quintet that has helped build the program into the 21-win team it is this season – a squad that, according to USCHO and College Hockey News, very likely locked up an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament with its sudden-death victory Saturday – got the honors of taking the night’s opening faceoff together in front of a standing room only crowd.

“It was emotional,” said senior centerman Anthony Croston, who recorded his career-best 23rd point in the win. “Pretty bittersweet, but being able to get a ‘W’ in our last home game is pretty special for us.”

In the course of Saturday’s game, the Sun Devils managed to build a 4-1 lead, the same margin of victory in their game the day before. This time though, AIC clawed their way back, scoring the equalizing goal with their netminder pulled with 1:05 left to play in the third period. Two of their goals came on the account of the power play. Including one spurred by a game-misconduct for checking from behind by ASU forward Steen Pasichnuk.

Freshman PJ Marrocco played the hero and secured the Devils’ victory a minute and a half into OT, taking a pass from senior winger Dylan Hollman and rocketing in the game-winner. All of it to the loud chants and synchronous glass pounding  of “A-S-U, A-S-U” as the team left the ice for the final time at home this season.

The win is just another taste of adversity this team has had to face in its rise to being No. 12 in the USCHO rankings and No. 8 in the PairWise. The program had gone from just 18 combined wins in its previous two seasons to 21 in this current season.

“I think it just shows a lot about our character,” said Hollman, who notched his 18th point of the season with the game-winning helper, also a career-high. “Not just us seniors, but the classes that have came in. You put in a lot of work every day and it’s just really great to see that we’re getting the results we want. I think [Saturday] is a great example of just the collective group we have.”

And although the weekend was dedicated to the seniors, one cannot forget about the freshmen on the Sun Devil team. Specifically, Calgary Flames draft pick Demetrios Koumontzis. The freshman recorded a six-point weekend, including a four-point night (1G, 3A) Saturday.

However, no goal this weekend showed the chemistry of the freshman quite like the two-man breakaway between freshman defenseman Joshua Maniscalco and Koumontzis in Friday’s 4-1 victory.

The sequence started with Maniscalco throwing the puck out of the defensive zone to Koumontzis who then flipped it back to Maniscalco before finally dishing it to Koumontzis who buried it into the back of the net.

“I saw that [Maniscalco] had a step on me and a little more speed so I wanted to give it to him first,” Koumontzis said. “He kinda faked the goalie and it was a beautiful pass. It was a tap in…I’ll take it whenever I can get it.”

Finally, the big question that has been permeating the air  for a few months now: “Will the Sun Devils make their first NCAA tournament appearance?” Although the answer is still up in the air, the odds are looking very favorable for ASU.

USCHO and College Hockey News think so. In a tweet late Saturday night, USCHO – which publishes the PairWise rankings each week, a duplicate of the comparative rankings the NCAA Tournament selection uses exclusively to select at-large teams – wrote: “As far as our math can tell, (ASU’s win over AIC) should clinch the NCAA at-large berth for the Sun Devils.” On Sunday morning, CHN made a similar prediction of its own: “Although there theoretically scenarios where Arizona State doesn’t make the NCAAs, the possibility at this point is remote to the extreme.”

Currently, the Sun Devils sit tied at eighth with Western Michigan and Cornell in the PairWise. With only two games left at Minnesota, which swept top-5 opponent Ohio State last weekend and sits 21st in the rankings, it appears that the Devils’ senior weekend sweep of AIC might have pushed them over the line.

As Powers reiterated before slipping back into a victorious postgame scene ASU’s home locker room for the last time this season: “Things are looking pretty good.”

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