ASU Men’s Hockey: Sun Devils hope to send off Oceanside with success

(Photo: Riley Trujillo/WCSN)

On March 12, 2022, the sunset will dim on Oceanside Ice Arena as members of Arizona State’s Men’s Hockey team stand outside the tiny, low capacity rink in a parking lot designated for players, staffers and arena employees.  The players will stand in a circle, with a soccer ball bouncing between them, laughing and shouting.

The game they play in the parking lot before every home game is called ‘sewer’, a common pregame routine for hockey teams from the NHL ranks to high school. This game of sewer will be different, though, and not just for the seniors, who will be playing the game the final time during their college career.  It will be the last game of sewer ever outside of the 747-seat arena that ASU has called home since the infancy of not only the Division I program, but the club one founded over 40 years ago in 1979.

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There are four different groups of players on this year’s roster, each reflecting the past, present and future while all still holding the Sun Devils’ current home rink of Oceanside close to their heart.  

First exist the freshmen and newcomers.  Some of them won’t know any better, like senior transfers Tim Theochardis or Jack Becker, who came from Bowling Green and Michigan respectively and will play out their final season of college hockey in an arena that is almost certainly less fabulous than where they came from.  While they won’t have the prior experience of playing at Oceanside like their others, they’ll still share the emotions that fellow ASU seniors Johnny Walker and Jacob Wilson will come upon as they play their last season of college hockey.

For the freshmen, the 2021-22 campaign at Oceanside serves as almost like a study abroad – a one-year offshoot in a place that is small and simultaneously a little uncomfortable, but filled with joy and fun regardless.

“It will be good for the freshman class to see what it is like to play a game in [Oceanside] and appreciate that,” the fifth-year senior Walker said.

Most of the Sun Devils are found in the middle.  Their careers began at Oceanside and will end at the new multi-purpose arena scheduled to open in December of 2022.  They will be the core that ushers in the new home, and bring upon a new era of ASU Hockey.

“I know for us, we have some unfinished business here [at Oceanside] and we didn’t get to play in this barn last year at all,” junior defenseman Jacob Semik said. “My freshman year, we were really successful so we’re looking forward to one last go-around.”

Then there are the seniors, some of whom have been around longer than others, who will end their college careers just as Oceanside ends its as the host of ASU’s NCAA D-1 squad.  

Some of these seniors are an almost immortal bunch: Walker, Wilson, forward Jordan Sandhu and forward Demetrios Koumontzis all walked into Oceanside as freshmen (Walker and Wilson in 2017, Sandhu and Koumontzis in 2018) as ASU hockey players before it was cool to play hockey at ASU.  In Walker and Wilson’s freshman season – the Sun Devils’ third as a D-1 program – ASU went 8-21-5.  The two previous seasons saw win totals of just five and ten.

When Sandhu and Koumontzis arrived, things started coming together more than they had previously. ASU wasn’t losing or even losing close anymore – the Sun Devils were winning, and when they lost, it felt like a measuring stick game rather than a lecture from those who had been there before.

“We knew we were going to take a big step this year,” Powers told Walter Cronkite Sports Network’s Jack Harris in 2019.  “We didn’t know how big of a step. It’s been a huge step.”

As the Sun Devils matched the program’s previous season-high win total of ten in November of 2018, ASU watched Oceanside – a laughing stock of an arena compared to what’s expected from a college hockey program, let alone a good, ranked one – transition from what was at-best a net-neutral for the Sun Devils into a real advantage.

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The irony in all of this was that Oceanside should have never seen the spotlight it did.

When ASU went D-1 in 2014, a new arena was planned to accommodate the move, with the start of the Sun Devils’ second season supposed to open up a new rink.  The latest possible time was considered to be 2017, when ASU entered its third season.

“I want to make it abundantly clear,” Powers told House of Sparky in 2015. “(Oceanside) is not, absolutely not, the permanent, long-term home for Sun Devil Hockey.”

But neither of those plans came to fruition – money in multiple places (including Glendale’s Gila River Arena, which has had its own issues over the years) was too lacking.  So ASU was forced to adjust, and make due with Oceanside longer than it expected to.

That turned into perhaps one of the best things that could have happened for the Sun Devils.

When ASU started winning more than it lost in 2018, Oceanside turned into a hell-hole for opponents.  The Sun Devils went 12-2 at Oceanside during their historic 2018-19 season, and followed it up with a 12-3-3 performance on home-ice the next year – good enough for a 24-5-3 record over ASU’s two NCAA tournament-worthy seasons.

“It’s what Powers says: It’s a sh*thole but it’s our sh*thole,” Walker said.

That quote – as in Oceanside being “our sh*thole” – is infamous in ASU Hockey lore.  But as seemingly blunt and offensive as it may be, it embodies a real mindset among the Sun Devils.

“Teams come in here and laugh at it, but they pack it like sardines in here,” Walker said.  “It’s pretty claustrophobic and tough to play in.  It really is a privilege to practice here and then have teams come here and play.”

One of the players who made Oceanside into ASU’s own hole-in-the-wall rather than just a rundown rink it plays in was Anthony Croston, who graduated in 2019 and, hailing from Phoenix, grew up in the rink.

“Just to play Division-1 in Arizona as an Arizona boy and play my last game in this rink that I grew up in is pretty special,” Croston told WCSN in 2019 ahead of his final game at Oceanside. “That’s going to be a bittersweet thing.”

Walker found himself emerging as a star during Croston’s senior year, and as another Phoenix-native, finds his final season as a Sun Devil coinciding with the program’s final at Oceanside symbolic.

“My first travel year was here,” Walker said.  “So it’s pretty cool.  Obviously it was my dream to play junior hockey because we didn’t have a college team here, but to come here and play college hockey at Oceanside – a lot of people look down on it, but I think it’s a huge privilege to be the last team to play here.  It’s pretty neat.”

Wilson, considered one of ASU’s enforcers the past few years, echoed a similar sentiment as Walker.

“We love Oceanside, it’s blue-collar,” he said.

Koumontzis, who went to high school in Minnesota and has seen all that the State of Hockey has to offer in terms of rinks – high-quality and low – took it straight to the heart when discussing what Oceanside brought and still brings to the ASU program.

“Honestly, it’s a ton of pride,” he said. “I think all of us do [have pride] – all of those that came in then and the guys that were here before.  They take a lot of pride out of it.

“To see the rink that is being built and all the hard work that was put in to get there, it’s pretty special and special to be a part of.”

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With all tears comes happiness though

Powers has joked in the past that he won’t miss Oceanside too terribly much.  He’s excited for the next era of his program.

“We got one more year in it, and we’re going to enjoy it, but we’re not going to shed a tear when we go into that new building,” Powers said.

That said, no one may owe more to Oceanside than ASU’s long-time head coach.  He’s been connected to the building longer than anyone on the Sun Devils – even Walker or the graduate in Croston.

“We’ll always have a connection to this place, and personally I will too, because I played here,” Powers said. “That’s how old this place is and that’s how old I am.”

But Powers also took ASU from the club level to the D-1 level to what is now a college hockey powerhouse – all while operating out of the shack that is Oceanside.

“It’s what we know,” Powers said. “We’ve been able to build a program out of this place.” 

ASU hopes to send the building off appropriately.  Its expectations for this season are sky-high – perhaps the highest in program history.  Part of that has Powers concerned, but he knows his seniors will always be there to right the ship. 

They don’t want that last game of sewer to precede a loss.

“Our biggest advantage this year is Oceanside,” Wilson said. “We love having teams come down and try and play in this facility when we pack the house.”