ASU Men’s Hockey: Series sweep an early milestone for new-look Sun Devils

(Photo: Kylee Meter/WCSN)

After Arizona State cruised to a 3-0 season-opening win Saturday night, Sun Devils coach Greg Powers made clear the new expectations for his team.

“We can’t be content with getting one (win) anymore,” he said.

Last year, ASU won the opening game of a weekend series four times but failed to complete the two-game sweep on each occasion. This season began differently.

In Game 2 on Sunday, the Sun Devils rolled past Alaska Fairbanks, scoring three times in the opening period and holding the Nanooks to 13 shots in a dominant 5-0 win, to earn their first home sweep in program history.

“It’s a good monkey off our back,” Powers said after Sunday’s victory, more than content with his retooled team. “It’s a goal we’ve set for a while. Now we just got to keep pushing forward.”

Stringing together wins has long been an issue for ASU since it made the jump to the NCAA Division I level four years ago. The program has only won more than two consecutive games once, when it racked up three straight victories in December 2016. Last year, ASU missed chances for early-season sweeps at home against Umass and Alabama-Huntsville en route to an 8-21-5 campaign.

For Powers, who has coached the Sun Devils since they were still a club team, the program’s first 2-0 start to an NCAA schedule was refreshing.

“It was a good team win,” Powers said Sunday. “We’re getting production from all the guys we need it from, it’s a good start to the season but that’s all it is, it’s a start.”

Before the season, Powers said this team — which features a second-straight top 20 recruiting class — combined more skill and experience than any past Sun Devil roster. Against the Nanooks, they looked like it.

Both victories included a dominant performance by junior goaltender Joey Daccord, who recorded the program’s first-ever complete series shutout. Daccord gave a lot of credit for much of his success in net to his defenders, who spent the entirety of the weekend blocking shots and preventing Alaska shooters from generating “grade-A” scoring chances on net.

“It was awesome seeing them blocking so many shots,” Daccord said. “Honestly, the chances weren’t really there for [Alaska-Fairbanks]. They did a really good job keeping everybody outside.”

In the two games, ASU held the Nanooks to just 36 total shots, only a handful of which came from dangerous scoring areas.

“There’s not a guy in our lineup that’s not willing to eat a puck for his teammate to get a win,” Powers said. “We made some adjustments in the defensive zone in the offseason, and so far they’ve paid off.”

It was also a landmark weekend for the highly-touted freshman class. Forwards Demetrios Koumontzis and PJ Marrocco netted their first career goals as Sun Devils. Koumontzis, who was selected by the Calgary Flames in the fourth round of this summer’s NHL Draft, opened the scoring Saturday and tacked on an assist a day later.

The Scottsdale native called playing for his hometown school “a dream” and in his debut series, he helped shore up a trouble spot for ASU last year.

In 2017-18, the Sun Devils struggled to score, averaging just 2.22 goals per game. But in the two games against Alaska Fairbanks, ASU scored two goals within a minute of each other three separate times, including first-period tallies Sunday from junior forward Tyler Busch and sophomore defenseman Jacob Wilson — a goal set up by Koumontzis’ pass — that gave ASU a quick lead in Sunday’s sweep-clinching win.

Perhaps the only real area of concern for the Sun Devils was the 14 minor penalties they committed over the course of the weekend. But even that wasn’t enough to dampen Powers’ mood. He noted that many of the penalties were coincidental calls and that when the Sun Devils were shorthanded, the overall penalty kill was clicking.

“Our PK looked great,” Powers said. “They were able to develop a lot of confidence, and they’re going to need to be unbelievable next week (against Ohio State) because the power play we’re going to see next week is going to be really, really good.”

Each positive Powers identified was further proof that the ceiling for this year’s Sun Devils could be at an all-time high for the young program. Next weekend will provide a tougher test, with No. 1 Ohio State coming to Tempe for a Friday-Saturday series, the first of many difficult matchups on ASU’s schedule this year. But after collecting two wins against Alaska Fairbanks, the Sun Devils have already checked off one goal that went unfulfilled a season ago.

“At the end of the day, the reality of it is we have no pressure on us,” Powers said. “All the pressure is on Ohio State.”

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