(Photo: Joey Plishka/WCSN)
TEMPE — On Oct. 9, 2015, Arizona State Men’s Hockey walked into its first Division I game and got a rude awakening. It lost 3-2 to Alaska Anchorage, allowed 40 shots and finished with only 23 shots of their own.
On Friday night in Tempe, about six years after that historic game, the Sun Devils might have been reminded of that welcome party to the D1 ranks by a team who is now going through the same thing.
In the Sun Devils’ 5-2 win over the newly D1 University of St. Thomas, ASU played with the same level of physicality that Alaska Anchorage used to win six years ago. The Sun Devils’ scored four goals in the third period to put the Tommies away.
“We were playing the way we want to play,” ASU head coach Greg Powers said.
While the score didn’t showcase the Sun Devils’ aggressiveness and physicality until late in the game, ASU certainly may have been reminded of what occurred in 2015 throughout the night.
For most of the first two periods, the Tommies held the Sun Devils to a tight game as the score was tied after the first and second intermissions. After a scoreless first period, ASU sophomore forward Matthew Kopperud got the ball rolling for the Sun Devils in the second period with a power play goal. Freshman forward Josh Doan assisted Kopperud for his ninth score of the season.
However, St. Thomas senior forward Grant Loven tied the game 30 seconds later with a goal of his own.
After the second period ended, the Sun Devils had amassed 30 shots compared to the Tommies’ 11. Despite the attack on the net, the Sun Devils only found the back of it once in the first 40 minutes.
“[St. Thomas senior goaltender Peter Thome’s] a good goalie,” Powers said. “I mean he played at North Dakota and he’s a really good goalie. He played great tonight, and we were just letting him see everything. When you let a kid like that see shots he’s going to stop them.”
ASU would go on to score four goals in the final period, however. Sophomore forward Benji Eckerle scored his first goal of the season and the Sun Devils’ second goal of the night with 17:44 left in the third frame.
“We got in [Thome’s] eyes and got some bodies in the net and were able to take a lead,” Powers said.
Sophomore defenseman Tim Lovell jumpstarted the Sun Devils’ string of three unanswered goals thereafter. After allowing the Tommies to tie the game at two with 12:17 left in the game, Lovell lit one up from the point for his third goal of the season.
“The play was made by [ASU senior forward] Johnny Walker, so it was an unbelievable look by him,” Lovell said. “It was good to capitalize on it.”
Following his goal, senior defenseman Tim Theocharidis put the puck in the back of the net and forward Johnny Walker scored an empty-net goal from the Sun Devils’ defensive half of the ice to effectively seal the game away.
It felt as though ASU was simply just bigger and better on Friday night.
“We were really good on the forecheck tonight,” Powers said. “I thought defensively our guys didn’t give them anything. We closed gaps. We closed time and space. They didn’t have much offensive zone time at all.”
ASU finished with 50 shots – 10 more than Alaska Anchorage in ASU’s first Division I game, and the Sun Devils’ hockey journey seemingly came full circle.
