ASU Men’s Hockey: No. 17 Cornell holds on late to complete sweep of No. 13 Sun Devils

(Photo: Riley Trujillo/WCSN)

After sweeping Boston College on home ice just over a week ago, No. 13 Arizona State headed out to Lynah Rink in Ithaca, New York with a stride of confidence to face No. 17 Cornell in its first road series of the new calendar year.

However, in the two-game stand-off with the Big Red, ASU manufactured just three goals altogether in back-to-back losses, unable to overcome Cornell sophomore Cam Donaldson’s two-goal performance and sophomore Matthew Galajda’s dominant goaltending in a 3-2 defeat Saturday night to cap off a winless weekend.

“There were a couple of critical mistakes that we can’t just make on the road tonight,” ASU coach Greg Powers said after the game.

Right out of the gates, Arizona State (16-9-1) picked right up where they left off in Friday night’s series-opening loss with another sluggish start.

Just 61 seconds into the opening frame, a shot from Cornell (9-5-1) senior Brendan Smith directed through traffic toward ASU junior goalie Joey Daccord’s crease, where Donaldson cashed in the loose change to give the Big Red an early 1-0 lead.

After killing off the Big Red’s first power play of the night, the momentum and intensity shifted toward Arizona State’s offense. After a few odd-man opportunities by ASU’s top lines, Cornell came back with a counter-attack and padded their lead.

Donaldson closed out the period with his second goal of the night, sneaking a snapshot past Daccord that dropped ASU into a two-goal deficit after 20 minutes for a second consecutive night. Donaldson’s two tallies extended his team-high total to nine goals on the year for Cornell.

The Sun Devils responded with a stronger effort in the middle frame, though, outshooting the Big Red 13-9. But despite a good-looking power play, ASU’s score was still stuck at zero after two periods.

After only finding the back of the net once in five periods against Cornell, the Sun Devils needed a jolt to kick-start any comeback down two goals in the final 20 minutes, yet allowed Cornell to add a power-play goal with 8:36 to play.

Any hope and luck seemed to have run out. However, with under six minutes to play, freshman Jarrod Gourley fired home his third goal of the season to cut into Cornell’s lead, 3-1.

The Sun Devils did not give up, either, as Powers pulled Daccord with 1:17 left in the game, putting six attackers in the offensive zone.

Shots from the point trickled toward the blue paint before junior co-captain Brinson Pasichnuk unleashed a one-timer that squeaked by the Cornell netminder with 20.6 seconds left to cut ASU’s deficit to just 3-2.

But it was too little, too late for the Sun Devils, who had dug themselves a hole too deep to climb out of as the offense failed to find its groove until the final stretches of the two-game weekend in upstate New York.

Daccord made 25 saves on 28 attempts on the evening while Galajda, Cornell’s backup netminder, stopped 27 of ASU’s 29 shots on goal with huge help from the defense. The Big Red’s defense blocked 24 of the Sun Devils’ attempts, supplying fuel to another victorious effort in front of their home crowd.

The Sun Devils were swept for just the third time this season and second on the road, their first two-loss weekend since a trip to Nebraska-Omaha in late November.

ASU will head back home for a bye week before facing another tall road task in two weeks when it heads back east to face Boston University. Overall, the Sun Devils — who entered the weekend ranked No. 10 in the PairWise rankings, which determine the 10 at-large berths to the NCAA Tournament at year’s end — have eight games left in the season. Six of them will be on the road.

“As we continue to grow and try to accomplish what we want to, going on the road, we can’t make those mistakes,” Powers said. “This one week we can learn from and build from.”

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