(Photo: Riley Trujillo/WCSN)
Arizona State hockey has made history, riding one of the most surprising success stories in all of college hockey to the promised land by clinching an NCAA Tournament berth on Sunday for the first time in the young program’s history.
Throughout the season, the Sun Devils racked up a mountain of milestones, beginning the season with back-to-back shutouts and the program’s first-ever home sweep and ending it with a top-10 finish in the Pairwise rankings, marking the largest jump among all 60 NCAA hockey programs (53 to 10) from last year to this year.
But when asked to take a trip down memory lane, coach Greg Powers and the Sun Devils cited a couple key “defining moments” that led to this year’s astonishing achievements.
“There have been a lot of defining moments this season,” Powers said. “The most defining was the win at Penn State. That made our guys truly believe, beating a top-five team … To go there and have the success that we did and a lead going into both third periods, it gave our guys a lot of belief.”
Led by sophomore forward Johnny Walker’s late-game heroics, the 4-3 overtime win over then-No. 6 Penn State at Pegula Ice Arena represented ASU’s first-ever victory over a top-10 opponent. It also helped validate ASU’s strong start to the season, serving as an early indicator of what was to come.
“It was a true team-builder and gave our team a sense of confidence that we’ve never had before,” junior defenseman Brinson Pasichnuk, ASU’s top point producer from the blue line, said. “Not only did we prove to ourselves we knew how good we were, but we proved to the hockey world that we are for real.”
Junior goaltender Joey Daccord felt right from the very beginning that this team had the chemistry and character to go the distance, but he too found that down-to-the-wire victory in Happy Valley as the type of truly special moment he hadn’t experienced before.
“We earned that win against a team in Penn State that we’ve had trouble with, played four times in my first two years and couldn’t find a way to win,” Daccord said. “We thought we should have had them on that Friday… We go back there in one of the toughest places to play in college hockey on Saturday night and come out with the win. That was our springboard moment. We knew we could compete with and beat anyone in the country.”
The Mike Richter finalist knew even before ASU’s first victory over a top-10 opponent in program history that this team had the drive and determination to lock horns with any team in the nation.
In fact, the inspiring belief came to fruition in a surprising fashion – back-to-back home losses against the then-No. 1 ranked team.
“We felt like those two losses to Ohio State was the turning point,” Powers said. “It wasn’t a moral victory… Our guys felt like they could have beat them. We knew we had something in those losses.”
“The first time we realized that we could compete with anybody was the weekend against Ohio State,” Daccord said. “Even though we lost two games, we came into the locker room after the game and we all thought ’we got a good team in here’ and we felt like we were going to win a lot of games.”
The Sun Devils lost 3-2 and 3-0 to the Buckeyes at Oceanside Ice Arena in just the second series of the year, but that did not douse any of their hopes. Instead, it fueled their optimism even more.
Returning home after a remarkable season with Edina High School in the Minnesota High School Elite League, Arizona-native freshman forward Demetrios Koumontzis saw “something special” with the Sun Devils in the first two weeks dawning a maroon and gold uniform.
“After those first four games, I felt to myself and said to my buddies, ’we got something special and I think we’re going to do something special,’” said Koumontzis, who led all Sun Devil freshman with 20 points while serving as a versatile threat on the right wing and setting up Walker during the power play.
Through the rigorous six-month long season, the Sun Devils embraced five road trips, two six-game cross-country adventures, and an action-packed Desert Hockey Classic. At the end, ASU has used its “defining moments” to spark the best season in its fourth Div. I campaign.
Now comes their biggest moment.
As the No. 3 seed in the Midwest Regional, ASU will face No. 2 seed Quinnipiac in Allentown, Penn., on Saturday, looking to turn a first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance into a first-ever NCAA Tournament win.
“Our work is going to be cut out in more ways than one,” Powers said. “But it’s going to be a great honor to play in our very first tournament game against a prominent program.”
