(Photo: Reagan Smith/WCSN)
The Sun Devils started out slow but were able to sweep the weekend series after a 3-2 win against rival Grand Canyon on Saturday night.
It was another shaky first period by ASU despite sophomore Amy Gulliksen scoring the game’s first goal.
GCU quickly answered scoring two goals in under a minute and held the lead heading into the first intermission.
At the 7:01 mark of the second period, freshman Abi McGee scored her fifth goal of the season, tying the game at 2-2.
Freshman Emily Kline put the Sun Devils back in the lead with just over 12 minutes remaining in the third period.
ASU was able to hold off a hard-charging GCU team that accumulated 42 shots on goal.
The team extended its winning streak to six games and remain undefeated with a 6-0 record.
But for the Sun Devils, they finished the night with just 23 shots on the net — 13 of which came in the final period.
“There’s no excuse for that,” assistant coach Kaley Marino said. “We need more shots on net, that’s something we can work harder on.”
The penalties racked up for ASU as the team went to the box five times, but the penalty kill unit stood strong, stifling GCU from scoring in those opportunities.
“I thought we did pretty well,” Marino said. “Obviously we don’t need that many, I thought, for the most part, we worked hard and we’re a hard-working team and the four that we put out there are always our hardest working. So, I was pretty impressed by our penalty kill.”
After scoring her second goal of the season, Kline said the game just had a different feeling coming into Saturday compared to Friday night’s matchup.
“In the warmups, you could just tell, it felt a lot better than yesterday,” she said.
In the final minute of the game, the Sun Devils faced plenty of pressure from GCU, but the defense was able to stand tall in the end.
“The last minute of the game, the last five minutes of the game, is gut-check time,” Marino said. “It’s not skill, it’s nothing else besides knowing who you are, character, and we have a lot of character in our locker room. So, I was proud of us for not letting the calls to get to us or anything like that, we worked really hard.”
After scoring a goal in each period, each break provided a prime opportunity to recharge before the next period.
“It’s one of our goals to win every single period,” Kline said. “I think it’s just really important for us to just get out there every period with new legs, especially after a nice cut in just sitting there, we just build each other up in the locker room.”
Putting pressure on the puck has been a big focus in practice coming into this weekend’s matchup and that seems to be the focus again for the next series.
“We need to put more pressure on the puck,” Marino said. “We came out a little bit slow, so we’re going to work on that… It’s just about being aggressive, I think being ready to go and just getting aggressive on the pucks in front of both nets we have to stick on puck in front of our net and we have to make sure we’re getting rebounds in front of theirs.”
After a week off, the Sun Devils will go on the road to Missouri to face Aquinas College on Oct. 18 and will continue the trip with two more games that weekend.
