ACHA D I Hockey: Utah pulls away in the third period to defeat ASU 3-1
Utah celebrates its opening series victory over ASU. The Utes outshot the Sun Devils 42-26 and earned eight power play opportunities.
Arizona State (6-2) played its first game in 12 days against the University of Utah (4-6-0-1) at Mountain America Community Iceplex on Thursday. Utah, fresh off consecutive road trips to ACHA national contenders Calvin University and UNLV, were the sharper team and scored two third period goals to defeat ASU 3-1.
Utah dropped 4-of-5 opening series games entering Thursday. After two months on the road to start the season, the Utes were extra motivated to change the narrative.
“I told the guys to empty the tank,” Utah coach Morgan Feenie said. “We have no games coming up next week. And it'll be an easier week of practice. We'll recover and get some of our injured players back. I told them to give everything that they have and they came out and did exactly that.”
ASU forward Ben Chase’s interference penalty put the Utes on the power play 60 seconds into the game. Utah capitalized on the early man advantage.
Halfway through the power play, Sun Devils forward Trevor Kennedy attempted to clear the puck from his own zone. Utah defenseman and team captain Dylan Dix intercepted the puck below the blue line and fired a quick wrist shot past ASU goalie Chase Hamm to give the Utes a 1-0 lead.
“The guys bought in from the start,” Dix said. “We've had slow starts most of the season and getting the first goal was huge for us. I think that's only the second time this season we got the first goal of the game. It's much easier to play with the lead.”
Utah forward Michael Urtis provided an excellent screen in front of the net and prevented Hamm from tracking the puck.
ASU matched Utah with a power-play goal of their own 90 seconds later. Sun Devils defenseman Ty Marchant fed forward Conner Tilmon a pin-point pass across the slot from the blue line to the opposite faceoff circle. Tilmon’s one-timer beat Utah goalie Joseph Greilich and tied the game 1-1.
Both team’s penalty kill units were perfect the rest of the game. The Utes and Sun Devils were 2-for-14 on the power play collectively. ASU had eight penalties in total, including four in the first period.
“It's easy to get frustrated when the puck doesn’t bounce your way,” ASU assistant coach Kelly Newton said. “That resulted in a lot of penalties. I think maybe two penalties were what we considered, ‘good penalties.’ The rest of them were lazy, or stick penalties, hooking penalties, slashing penalties, stuff like that. It's not going to win games.”
The time spent shorthanded caught up to ASU as Utah was the more energized team as the game went on. The Utes won the majority of the puck battles and had a significant advantage in offensive zone possession and scoring chances. Utah outshot the Sun Devils 42-26.
“That really turns the momentum of the game around,” Newton said. “When you're having to play on your heels all the time killing, and then all of a sudden try and figure out, ‘how do we get back into our game again?’”
After a scoreless second period, Utah forward Ethan Light broke the tie with a snap-shot from just below the left circle 6:26 into the final frame.
Six minutes later, ASU’s top line was caught on a long shift. Utes forward and assistant captain Michael Urtis beat the exhausted Sun Devils defenseman on a hard forecheck. Urtis skated the puck to the left side of the net and put a harmless shot on net. Hamm easily made the save with his blocker, but Urtis batted home the rebound to give Utah a 3-1 lead.
“It looked like we had the upper edge in terms of conditioning late in the game,” Feenie said. “We had to continue to pressure them and run our forecheck and it paid off. And we got lucky. Hamm played incredibly in net for them and our goalie did the same. It was a battle between the two goalies and our team came out on top.”
Hamm did everything possible to keep the Sun Devils in the game and made 39 saves. Utah goaltender Joseph Greilich stopped 25-of-26 shots, including a huge glove save on a point-blank shot from Marchant with under five minutes left.
Greilich’s save helped the Utes kill ASU’s 4-on-3 man advantage. The Sun Devils had a couple more high quality scoring chances in the final minutes but the late push was too little too late.
“We weren't sharp,” Newton said. “Our passes weren't clicking and our forecheck was off. They wanted it more tonight. Hamm played lights out. Without him we would have gotten buried. Kudos to them, they got a good win on the road. We have to put in a better effort to take the split tomorrow.”
ASU hosts Utah in the final game of the series Friday at 9 p.m. MST at MACU Iceplex.