(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
The Arizona State women’s hockey team began their Western Collegiate Hockey League Showcase with an unexpected loss against Denver University Friday night.
The Sun Devils didn’t pull freshman starting goaltender Macy Eide in the final minute of the game to add an extra player to the ice to try to tie the game, the Sun Devils fell 3-2 to the Pioneers.
This was the first time that ASU has lost to Denver in the three years of the program.
In the high altitude, senior captain KC McGinley broke the zeros on the score sheet only three minutes into the match against the Pioneers. Her goal came from the top of the goal crease to give the Devils an early 1-0 lead.
Even though Denver only had 12 players, they weren’t ready to let up. Marissa Lambert tied the game two minutes later when she went five hole on Eide.
The Pioneers continued their offensive push as Lambert kept poking at the puck during a scrum in front of Eide minutes later. Lambert’s stick finally contacted the puck to push it past Eide’s pads to take a 2-1 lead.
ASU had 18 shots in the first period but were unable to capitalize on any more the opportunities.
“It comes down to our net play in the front, you could see that Denver was on top of the net,” assistant coach Kaley Marino said. “Not enough of the Devils in front of the net were not being aggressive on the puck and we are getting the shots on net, but the next step is about who wants it.”
Lambert went on to score her third goal in the final seven minutes of the first period. Only feet away from the goaltender’s crease, she shot the puck off the bottom of the left post, which deflected into the net to increase the lead to 3-1 for the Pioneers.
“The first period was definitely a little rough,” Eide said. “I think I underestimated what I was going up against and I just had to take it one step at a time and one period at a time.”
Denver’s Sarah McDonald assisted all three of Lambert’s goals on the night.
In the final two periods the Sun Devils switched gears and became more defensively sound including Eide in the net.
“I had to watch the puck go into my body a lot more because the first three goals that went in I kept losing it,” Eide said. [The defense] started listening and helping out a lot more and started putting a body on them.”
Right out of intermission, Canadian native and freshman forward Ashlyn Sunderman cut the Pioneer lead to 3-2 with her first collegiate goal, finishing a rebound from Amy Gulliksen’s original shot on net.
Sunderman’s goal and Gulliksen’s assist were their first points of the season.
“It was pretty cool,” Sunderman said. “I’ve been waiting for it since our first game … I just saw the rebound and it was just instinct that it happened.”
“She’s great on the puck, she has that aggression and assertiveness with the puck,” Marino said. “I think she feels confident with the puck and we can count on her to be there being aggressive.”
Despite a deficit of just one goal, the Sun Devils could not tie the game up over the final 35 minutes, dropping their second game of the season.
The Pioneers walked away with a win, but throughout the game Marino felt that the Devils continued to improve on their play and that for the players, it was important to take that away.
Despite the loss, ASU has very little time to stress over the loss with the quick turnaround of games.
“We have a lot of discussion, a lot of the notes and looking over things,” Marino said. “I like to pull my defense before the next game, so everyone will sleep on it, and before we get on the ice we have a team pow-wow to talk about what we can start doing well the next game.”
The Sun Devils bounce back tomorrow to play their second and third games of the trip. ASU first plays Midland at 10 a.m., then finishes the day against Air Force at 7 p.m.
