(Photo: Liesl Babicka/WCSN)
After finishing Friday night’s game in a 1-1 tie, the Arizona State women’s club hockey team finally shook off all of the offseason cobwebs, finishing its two-game series against Grand Canyon University with a decisive 4-1 victory on Saturday.
GCU began to apply pressure immediately after puck-drop. However, even with the pressure, the Lopes struggled to capitalize in the attacking zone. Mistimed passes plagued them early on, allowing Arizona State to rush down to the opposite end of the ice and rack up shots.
Lopes turnovers allowed ASU to initiate many counterattacks, to which the Sun Devil girls capitalized upon early. None were costlier than when the Lopes turned the puck over in the neutral zone, allowing the Devils to initiate a two-on-one that ended in the game’s first goal, netted by Amber Galles — her second of the 2017-18 campaign.
With the 1-0 lead, the Sun Devil women turned up the heat, playing a much faster brand of hockey compared to the previous night. This faster approach caused GCU to play sloppily, putting ASU on the power play.
A chance to be on the power play was all the Sun Devils needed, and thirty-five seconds after the first goal, Dannika Borges ripped a slapshot home, expanding the Sun Devil lead to 2-0 with 6:55 left in the first period. For the rest of the period, ASU kept GCU on its heels, creating more power play chances.
The blueliners were more actively involved in the season’s second contest, attacking the nets much harder than last night. With 3:15 left in the first period, captain and defenseman KC McGinley let loose a slapshot in wide open ice that buzzed by GCU goalie Haylee Gannaway’s shoulder and found the back of the net for yet another power play goal. It would be ASU’s third and last goal of the first period.
“We got a lot of nerves out yesterday and we knew what to expect,” said McGinley regarding the aggressive behavior the ASU defensemen showed tonight. “We got our legs under us, and just went for it this time.”
The second period brought with it a slower pace to the game. GCU’s play settled and became more controlled throughout the second period, only giving up one penalty, a trip by forward Rebecca Sanda.
Meanwhile, even with the pace of play more even, ASU still found a way to keep possession of the puck for most of the second period.
With puck possession comes goals, and McGinley found the back of the net again, netting her second goal of the night with 12:31 remaining in the second.
Two ASU penalties late in the second period caused the momentum to shift towards Grand Canyon’s favor, forcing ASU sophomore goalie Jordan Nash-Boulden to make an impressive blocker save with less than a minute remaining in the period. GCU would take over a five on three into the third.
A stalwart defensive stand for ASU started off the third period, killing off both penalties, going a perfect seven for seven on the penalty kill on the evening.
The Sun Devil defense would continue to shine all night long, blocking shots and preventing GCU from crashing the net.
Despite a strong defense from the Devils, the Lopes would try to claw their way back into the game. Jenna Kimbrel would score one for GCU with 1:52 left in the game. The effort would be for naught, however, as ASU went on to knock off GCU 4-1.
“My team did a really good job all weekend of limiting those Grade-A scoring chances,”ASU goalie Jordan Nash-Boulden said after the game. Nash-Boulden finished the weekend with a 97.3 save percentage saving 73 of the 75 shots she faced.
The Sun Devils play UC Boulder in their next series. The first game of that serieswill be Friday, October 6th at 10:10 p.m. at Oceanside Ice Arena.
