Sun Devil hockey following football team's inspirational lead in first NCHC season
ASU has won 12 of its past 13 games including two exhibition wins vs. USNTDP
Eleven games into the 2024-25 college hockey season, national analysts thought that their suspicions about the Arizona State hockey team had been confirmed. The Sun Devils were 0-3 in conference play, 3-7-1 overall, and following an 11-goal outburst in an opening-weekend, two-game series against Air Force, ASU scored just 17 goals in its next nine games (1.89 per game).
A preseason media poll tabbed ASU for eighth place in the nine-team National Collegiate Hockey Conference so it all made sense. The Sun Devils had no business expecting instant success in the nation's best conference — one that has captured six of the past eight national championships.
Coach Greg Powers, his staff and the players had other ideas. They knew that they had outshot their first three NCHC opponents badly. They knew that they were missing a laundry list of key forwards. They knew that their goaltending tandem would settle in after some inconsistent early patches from Gibson Homer. They believed that better puck luck and better days were ahead.
Those days started with a 3-2 win against Omaha at Mullett Arena on Nov. 16, but the real turning point of the season came a week later when the Sun Devils traveled to face top-ranked, undefeated and defending national champion Denver in a two-game series at Magness Arena. The Pioneers were riding a 21-game winning streak, and they rode a bit of luck to tie the game on a pinballing puck with 4:01 remaining in regulation.
"I remember we just sat on the bench in the last TV timeout and said, 'Hey, that's not going to beat us tonight,'" Powers said. "'That can't beat us tonight.'"
Sun Devils forward Artem Shlaine made sure it did not, scoring with 45 seconds remaining on a broken play to stun the home crowd and the college hockey nation.
The Sun Devils were not finished.
"Even after that win, we came in the next night really calm, not thinking, 'OK, we won one game in Denver. We're good,'" Shlaine said. "We just kind of said, 'Let's go out there and do what we did yesterday. Let's try to match their intensity at the start. Let's try to slow them down through the neutral zone again.'"
Shlaine had two goals for the second straight night to spark ASU's 5-2 victory. It’s impossible to quantify the impact that sweep had upon the Sun Devils' confidence, but to the players and coaches, it was validation of what they already believed.
"Those big sweeps or turning points in the season, they happen," Shlaine said, "but it's not like we just suddenly figured out how we have to play. We had the blueprint. We knew how we had to play to be successful but it just didn't turn into goals before the Denver series. That series was just kind of a stamp of approval for all the guys to understand that this way works. Don't waver from what we do and we will start winning."
That's pretty much all the Sun Devils have done since. A 4-3 overtime loss to North Dakota — one that still irks Powers — is the only thing that stands in the way of an 11-game winning streak (13 if you count two exhibition victories against the United States National Team Development Program). In that North Dakota game, the Sun Devils continued an annoying program habit of blowing leads late in games when UND scored with 28 seconds in regulation, but the annoyance has lessened because the Sun Devils are surging.
At 13-8-1, ASU sits 12th in the PairWise rankings that largely determine the 16-team NCAA Tournament field. They also sit alone in first place in the NCHC, although Western Michigan is just one point back with two games in hand. When you consider that three of ASU's losses came when they blew a lead in the final minute of play, the PairWise picture could look a lot rosier.
"We could be sitting around No. 5," Powers said.
Health has also hampered the Devils. Shlaine, a Moscow born graduate student transfer from Northern Michigan, took a shot off his skate in the team's very first practice this season and sustained a broken foot. He has only played 16 of the team's 22 official games but leads the team with 1.13 points per game.
Graduate forward Dylan Jackson and junior forward Ryan Alexander have also played 16 games. Junior forward Charlie Schoen has only played eight games. Junior forward Cruz Lucius has played just four. Graduate forward Lukas Sillinger and Ty Jackson have each missed a pair of games. And the list goes on.
"Everybody has injuries but, I mean, it's been nonstop for us," Powers said. "I think in the first 12 games, we had anywhere from three to four of our top-six forwards out every game."
This weekend's series against Colorado College at Mullett Arena will mark the first time that the Sun Devils are at full health all season. The Tigers swept the Sun Devils in ASU's first-ever NCHC series in Colorado Springs so payback is on the Devils' minds. But payback is just a part of the bigger picture.
When ASU embarked on its inaugural season in the NCHC — the last key piece of the program-building puzzle after Mullett Arena was completed in October 2022 — Powers was realistic but optimistic about his program's chances. He knew the conference's pedigree — "we're in the SEC of hockey," he said — but he also liked his mix.
Forward transfers such as Shlaine (Northern Michigan), leading goal scorer Ryan Kirwan (Penn State), Lucius (Wisconsin), Bennett Schimek (Providence), goaltender Luke Pavicich (UMass Lowell ) and defenseman Noah Beck (Clarkson) gave the team a group of veteran who had been through conference wars elsewhere and understood the assignment.
Talented freshmen such as projected first-round pick Cullen Potter, forward Sam Court and defensemen Brasen Boser and Joel Kjellberg injected the team with energy, while an existing cast that includes the Jacksons, Sillinger, Benji Eckerle, Ethan Szmagaj and Ty Murchison was largely responsible for rebuilding the team's culture last season.
"I truly believed that we could finish in the top half of the conference because we have a really good team," Powers said. "Would I have ever predicted we would be in first place in late January? No, I'm not gonna lie. I didn't expect that."
Now that the Sun Devils are in the top perch, however, expectations have changed. ASU wants to win the NCHC. They have balanced scoring (nine players have 12 or more points), the goaltending has stabilized (Homer is 15th in the nation with a .927 save percentage), the team's power play ranks ninth in the nation at 26.8 percent, and the team is 19th in the nation in goals against per game (2.5).
"We sit at the top so we know teams are going to be coming after us," said Beck, who is one of three ASU players (along with Kirwan and Schimek) nominated for the Hobey Baker Award, presented annually to college hockey's top player. "We're not the underdog story anymore. We've clearly shown we can play in this conference but we want more.
"We've just got to just keep building that separation and taking this league by storm, but now that we're back to being fully healthy, I don't think there's anyone in our locker room that doesn't have full confidence that we're going to win, going into each game."
If the Sun Devils need further inspiration, they have only to look across Packard Drive to Mountain America Stadium. The ASU football team was picked to finish dead last in its first season in the 16-team Big 12. Instead, it won the conference, earned a top-four seed in the College Football Playoff and came within a fourth-down Texas conversion (and a blown targeting call) of defeating the Longhorns and advancing to the final four.
Sun Devils football coach Kenny Dillingham even offered inspiration when he read the lineup in the hockey team's dressing room before the championship game of the Desert Hockey Classic on Jan. 4 — a game in which ASU beat Cornell, 4-0. Dillingham's dad was a youth hockey coach in Arizona and both his brothers played the game. He said there is "no doubt" that the programs are connected through their similar storylines and his hockey household.
"I think every single guy on our team has followed every single one of their games so it was super exciting to have him come talk to us," Beck said. "He gave us a motivational speech and it was pretty awesome. He talked about how hockey and football are similar and it basically comes down to whoever wants it more."
It's hard to question the Devils' desire after this remarkable recent run.
"In Russia, we have a saying that 'appetite comes when the food is served,'" Shlaine said. "The saying means that you always would want more. The food is here. We have that appetite now.
"We know we're not North Dakota, we're not BU, we're not BC with all this tradition and all these standards where you've got to win this and that or fans are going to boo you. We're setting the standard as we go, but I think that takes away the pressure from us and lets us play free and make plays. That's what we've been doing.”
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Delilah learned how to do the pitchfork at the last ASU game we took her to. And she's been wearing her ASU sweatshirt nonstop. This team has been fun to watch and excited we've got tickets to to nights game and another game in February!
Homer has looked really good, and amazing that we have multiple Hobey Baker nominees on the team. Go Devils 🔱