(Photo: Marina Williams/WCSN)
TEMPE — Ten regular season games remain on No. 17 Arizona State men’s ice hockey’s schedule, each equally vital as the next.
Up to this point, the Sun Devils have put together a largely successful 2023-24 campaign. ASU is ranked No. 16 in the PairWise Rankings — which emulate the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s criteria — and has been a top-20 team in the USCHO.com Poll for all but one series of the season. Even so, everything could come crashing down at any moment purely due to the landscape of college hockey.
As an independent program unaffiliated with a conference, the Sun Devils are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to their tournament resumé. While most teams are currently in the meat of their conference seasons, ASU can only play other independents. This doesn’t provide much opportunity to pick up quality wins, with 21st-ranked Alaska being their only remaining opponent that is top-40 in the PairWise.
Despite a strong overall season, ASU has struggled of late, dropping two games to then-No. 18 Cornell before splitting at home with Augustana. Every team experiences struggles at some point in the season, but this difficult four-game stretch didn’t help the Sun Devils’ postseason case.
One of the biggest disadvantages of being an independent team is the Sun Devils lack of participating in a conference tournament. However, this problem is twofold — the Sun Devils can’t bolster their resumé with quality late-season wins, and a team that otherwise wouldn’t make the big dance could do so by winning their conference tournament, effectively stealing one of the 16 tournament bids up for grabs.
Because of this, ASU can ill-afford to drop any of their final 10 games. The margin for error is just too thin.
“It’s everything,” senior forward Lukas Sillinger said of the upcoming stretch. “It’s our season on the line here with the next 10 games. We’ve probably got to win out to make the tournament, and that’s our main goal, and that’s what we’re focused on doing coming off the break here.
“Every game we’re playing here is a must-win game. So we’ve got to focus on these guys and take it one game at a time, starting on that first Friday and then moving to Saturday.”
This is the mindset ASU needs to carry throughout the final five weeks of the regular season. If head coach Greg Powers’ group intends to extend their season into late March, there simply isn’t an alternative.
It doesn’t matter that the Sun Devils (17-6-5) are currently tied with the third-most victories in all of college hockey. The fact that ASU is one win away from matching last season’s win total with five series left to play is irrelevant. And it most certainly doesn’t matter that Lindenwood (5-14-3) — who visits Tempe for a two-game set this weekend — is one of the lowest-ranked programs in the country, sitting at 60th out of 64 teams in the PairWise.
“The only thing we can do is play what’s in front of us and worry about what we can control,” Powers said. “Right now, that’s Lindenwood… They’re going to come in and look to play spoiler and get a big win. They’ve had some good moments this year… If you take Lindenwood lightly, they’ll make you pay. The guys understand what’s at stake.”
From a birds-eye view, Lindenwood’s 2023-24 campaign has been forgettable. The Lions got off to a 1-6-2 start, and things didn’t get much better as their second season as an NCAA program progressed. Entering the weekend of Jan. 12, they only had three victories, and their overall statistics certainly reflect the struggles they’ve faced this year.
Lindenwood ranks near the bottom of the nation for most major stats, even on special teams. Their offense hasn’t been spectacular, but the Lions’ most glaring weakness is on the defensive end. Their 43.7 shots against per game are the most in the nation, and these shots often find the back of the net, as they allow the second-most goals per game (4.5). But even with such circumstances, Lindenwood has found some success to take from this season, most notably in their most recent four-game stretch.
A day removed from a 5-0 loss to then-No. 3 Wisconsin, the Lions pulled off an improbable feat. Despite being outshot by a 54-24 margin, Lindenwood secured a 3-3 tie with the Badgers mainly thanks to junior netminder Trent Burnham, who stole the show by making 51 saves. The Lions then swept Stonehill the following weekend, giving them a great deal of momentum heading into the desert.
Burnham’s 51-save performance is a microcosm of the consistent results he’s delivered for Lindenwood all season long despite a heavy workload. Starting in 21 of the Lions’ 22 games, he’s made the third-most saves in the nation while maintaining a .903 save percentage. In short, ASU might get a lot of chances this weekend but will have a strong and experienced goaltender standing in its way.
In terms of scoring, Lindenwood does possess some offensive weapons, both of which made their presence felt against Stonehill. Junior forward Kyle Jeffers — who leads the team with eight goals and 15 points in 22 games — notched two goals and two assists in the series, while fellow junior Cage Sterzer also logged four points.
There’s no question that if ASU isn’t at its very best, Lindenwood could very well steal a game and deliver a heartbreaking loss to the home team. After all, that’s exactly what the Sun Devils experienced firsthand in their last series against Augustana. Despite outshooting the Vikings 38-15 and had the better of the scoring chances, ASU gave up a last-second goal to seal a dejecting 5-4 game one loss.
“We’ve been a ranked team all year, so when you play unranked teams and teams that are coming in looking to prove themselves, they generally play up,” Powers said. “They play up to a level, and the Augustana weekend was a head-scratcher for us. We thought we played a lot better Friday than Saturday, but we just didn’t get the win.
“If we could recreate how we played that Friday, we’ll win a lot of games here down the stretch,” Powers said. “I think the biggest thing, again, is that our guys are fresh, they’re excited, they know what they have to gain. We’re in position to do what we want to do and that’s a credit to our players.”
The Sun Devils could very well begin the season’s home stretch with two key contributors — senior forward Ty Jackson and graduate forward Tyler Gratton — both back in the lineup after missing time due to injury. Jackson, a first-line forward who has eight points in 13 games this season, was sidelined for about two months after sustaining an injury at Colorado College on Dec. 1. Gratton, the team’s captain, didn’t play in game two against Augustana, but is trending towards returning either this weekend or next. The Penn State transfer has 18 points in 27 games this year.
Aside from senior forward Dylan Jackson, who suffered a season-ending injury against Colorado College, this weekend may mark the most healthy ASU has been in quite some time.
“If we get those two back, we almost have a full lineup for the first time in over two months,” Powers said.
So begins arguably the Sun Devils’ most pivotal stretch of games in over three years. While the drawbacks of being an independent program have forged a difficult path to an NCAA Tournament berth, ASU is still in control of its destiny. While there are some outside factors, a strong 10-game stretch to finish the season will give the Selection Committee a tough decision to make — and could secure the Sun Devils first NCAA Tournament berth since 2018-19.
“I think everybody kind of knows the main goal and the end result here,” senior defenseman Tim Lovell said. “I think we’ve got to win as many games as we can, and as an independent, it’s playoff hockey right now, so we have to win out from here, and do the best we can do every day.”
