Sun Devils' investment in conference-play veterans paying dividends in NCHC

6-5 OT win against Denver keeps ASU in contention for conference title

Arizona State celebrates its 6-5, OT win against Denver at Mullett Arena on Saturday. (Photo courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics)

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When the Arizona State coaching staff put its collective heads together to formulate a plan for the program's first season in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC), it settled on the importance of experience.

Arizona State added six players through the transfer portal who had been through conference play elsewhere: junior forward Cruz Lucius from Wisconsin (Big Ten); junior forward Bennett Schimek from Providence (Hockey East); senior forward Ryan Kirwan from Penn State (Big Ten); graduate defenseman Noah Beck from Clarkson (ECAC); graduate center Artem Shlaine from Northern Michigan (CCHA); and goaltender Luke Pavicich from UMass Lowell (Hockey East).

"We just believed that they could lead the way," coach Greg Powers said last fall. "We needed guys who had done it before because until you do it you just don't understand how intense it is. There's no nights off in this conference." 

Eighteen games into conference play, it's clear that Powers and assistant coaches Alex Hicks, Dana Borges and Mike Corbett made the right decision.

Schimek had a pair of goals including the game-winner in OT, Kirwan scored his team-leading 19th goal, Lucius had two assists, Beck and Shlaine each added an assist, and Pavicich came on relief to help the Sun Devils rally past No. 7 Denver, 6-5, in overtime on Saturday at Mullett Arena.

With the win, ASU (17-10-1) took three of four games from the defending national champions (while losing the fourth in OT on Friday). The win kept the Sun Devils (12-6 NCHC) in the hunt for the conference title; a possibility nobody outside the program expected before the season began. With six games remaining in NCHC play, ASU (37 points) is tied with Omaha for second place, three points behind first-place Western Michigan. Those two teams also represent ASU's final two series opponents after the Devils travel to face seventh-place Minnesota Duluth next weekend.

By defeating Denver, the Sun Devils effectively eliminated the Pioneers (20-7-1, 9-6-1) from the conference race. Denver is in a battle with North Dakota and Colorado College for the final home seed in the conference tournament. ASU is well on its way to achieving its preseason goal of hosting a first-round series.

"We responded every time tonight," said Powers, whose team rallied from a 5-3 deficit with two goals in the final eight minutes of play, including Schimek's game-tying goal that had to be reviewed because officials initially ruled it had not crossed the goal line. "We obviously played much, much better than we did [Friday]. I think the result was deserving. We deserved to win this game. I thought we were the better team."

It should be noted that the six transfers were not the only contributors on Saturday. Sun Devils fourth-year defenseman Ty Murchison was a rock, logging 22:01 of ice time. Freshman defenseman Joel Kjellberg logged the third-most ice time of any ASU defensemen (behind only Beck and Murchison), and forward Lukas Sillinger, who played conference hockey while at Bemidji State, had a pair of goals to give him 18 points in his past 11 games.

"It feels really good," Sillinger said of his current run, "but at the end of the day, we're winning hockey games and that's our end goal."

The leadership from the conference veterans hasn't always been of a vocal nature. Saturday's performance was more of a lead-by-example approach, but Schimek said there have been plenty of conversations with the conference newbies about what to expect and how to prepare.

"A lot of us that have experience kind of just preach over and over again how important these games are and how tight the race is," he said. "Every game is just so important in this league. The race is so tight up top and you can't take a game off."

The Sun Devils have heeded that advice, which has put them in position to achieve a much loftier goal.

"Our guys, they want to win this league and they believe that we can," Powers said. "They believe we're good enough. 

"We've played such a tough schedule and so many great programs this year that there's just nobody that we will play moving forward that our guys don't believe they genuinely can beat. When we play the right way, we play together, there is nobody that we can't beat."

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