(Photo: Kyle McCartney/WCSN)
TEMPE — On a Halloween weekend in Tempe, Arizona State Men’s Hockey faced a St. Thomas squad that offered them a proposition: trick, or treat.
Perhaps to one’s dismay, senior forward Colin Theisin chose a trick.
A hat trick, to be exact.
Behind the three goal performance from Theisin, ASU (6-4-0) was able to put away St. Thomas (1-9-0) 4-2 on Saturday night to complete the series sweep of the Tommies and win its third consecutive game.
From the puck drop, it looked as if the Sun Devils wanted to make sure that they took care of the one-win Tommies swiftly. They started off the game with a very fast pace, which was quickly reflected on the scoreboard.
Within the first 10 minutes of the game, ASU had already notched two goals, the first coming from the stick of senior forward Sean Dhooghe, who speedily skated past two Tommies defenders and put the puck past St. Thomas’ goalkeeper just under eight minutes into play.
Then, Theisin took over the scoring from there. He recorded his first goal of the game just 90 seconds after Dhooghe’s, putting ASU up 2-0 within the first sixth of the game.
“I thought our first 10 minutes were unbelievable,” ASU head coach Greg Powers said. “I thought that it was our best 10 minutes of the season. You could feel that our guys were ready to play tonight.”
ASU’s early aggression saw their offense control the puck most of the first period, meaning sophomore goalkeeper Cole Brady and the Sun Devils defense didn’t see much activity. Brady only saw six shots from the Tommies in the first period, blocking each of them.
“It’s a bit tougher when you’re not facing much action, but you just have to keep reminding yourself what’s coming and give yourself some mental cues to stay in it,” Brady said.
After a second goal by Theisin early in the second period to put the Sun Devils up 3-0, fans in attendance at Oceanside Ice Arena might have thought that ASU would steamroll St. Thomas, the fresh face of Division I men’s hockey.
However, due to a handful of penalties in the second period, the Tommies were able to stay in contention for most of the game. ASU committed two match penalties, one by freshman forward Jack Jensen and another by senior defenseman Tim Theochardis.
After Jensen’s penalty, the Tommies were able to finally get on the board, with a power play goal from senior forward Christiano Versich to tighten the score to 3-1.
“We came out and it looked like we may be up three or four after the first… then (we) took two penalties to give them a little bit of momentum,” Powers said. “It stopped our momentum, then we never got it back. It’s on us to not give them belief, and tonight we gave them belief by giving them some penalties.
“That’s a dangerous thing.”
Ultimately, ASU’s two goal lead going into the third period proved to be too much for the Tommies to overcome. Late into the third period, St. Thomas elected to go with an empty-net to try and generate offense.
However, once Theisin got possession of the puck, he was able to re-generate his offense from earlier, easily sliding the puck into the net to record the hat trick, the second of his career.
Even though it wasn’t a perfect performance, the Sun Devils third straight win built much needed momentum going into their bye week.
After the bye, the Sun Devils return to the ice on Nov. 12, when they travel to Hamden, Connecticut to face Quinnipiac (5-1-2).
