(Photo: Marina Williams/WCSN)
Tempe. AZ – No. 13 Arizona State Men’s hockey’s (9-2-2) long home stand comes to an end this Thanksgiving weekend with a bang as the No. 9 Providence Friars (8-3-2, 4-2-2) come to Tempe.
This will be only the second meeting between the two teams with the last time the two squared off was on the road in Pittsburgh, PA, at a neutral sight. ASU ended up dropping that game 6-0.
Providence College is a private Catholic University in Providence, Rhode Island, home to the Friars. This weekend, the Friars open up a five-game road trip starting with ASU before a game at Boston College, Brown, and Boston College again – a stretch of games that takes them into the New Year.
Providence has been part of the Hockey East conference since 1984-85 and has had a winning record for the previous 12 seasons, which have all been under the direction of head coach Nate Leaman.
Before taking the head coaching position at Providence, Leaman spent the eighth season as the head coach of Union College from 2003-11, and prior to that, he was an assistant coach at Harvard under Mark Mazzoleni. Since taking over for Tim Army, who only had one winning season in his six years as head coach, Providence has yet to have a losing season and won their first NCAA National Championship in 2015 with a record of 26-13-2.
This year, the Friars have started the season hot, which has seen them ranked as high as fifth nationally. To start the year, they split with a top-five Michigan team, beat No. 2 Denver in a one-game series, and beat and tied with No. 15 New Hampshire. However, they did drop two games last weekend in a home-and-home matchup with No.15 at the time, the University of Massachusetts. Heading into that weekend, Providence was 8-1-2 and ranked No. 5.
“We watched the tape of both games against UMass, and they deserve a better fate,” head coach Greg Powers said. “They lost two games late. They’re going to come in here hungry and ready to go, and we got our work cut out for us.”
Leading the way on the score sheet is sophomore forward Jaroslav Chmelar and senior forward Chase Yoder, both with five goals so far. Seventeen different players have notched at least one goal this year, and 10 of them have two or more. To complement the offensive, Providence has the top-scoring defense in college hockey, holding opponents to only 25 goals in 13 games, which averages 1.92 goals a game allowed by the defense.
Between the pipes in all 13 games this season has been Swedish native and sophomore goaltender Philip Svedebäck. Svedebäck holds a 1.86 goals against average and a .917 save percentage.
“Huge weekend against a really, really good team. I think they may be the best team we play all year,” said ASU head coach Greg Powers. “It’s their structure, and they’re difficult to play. They’re so hard to play against; they play the right way. They’re insanely well-coached – depth at every position. They’re just really good. I like how they play. If we play like we did last Friday, we stand zero chance this team will come in, and they’ll embarrass us.”
Providence also holds a top 10 penalty kill unit that is kill of man advantages 88.1% of the time. When they have an extra man of their own, they are scoring 19.2% of the time, which is 27th best in the nation.
After three more power-play goals in their weekend sweep over Alaska Anchorage, the Sun Devils now boast a top-five power play in the country, converting 29.1% of the time which is suitable for fourth-best nationally. The penalty kill for the Sun Devils sits 45th best nationally at 78.6%.
The only new addition to the score sheet last weekend was sophomore forward Ryan Alexander, who got his first goal of the season in game two – he became the 16th different goal scorer for the Sun Devils this year.
The series kicks off Friday, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m. MST, with game two on Sunday, Nov. 26, at 2 p.m. MST.
