One of ASU's athletic programs won the national championship in its first season of existence on Saturday. Unlike that successful women's triathlon squad, one-year-old ASU hockey is showing its age.
In its first NCAA season last year, Sun Devil hockey went 5-22-2 in a hybrid schedule. But the offseason yielded new personnel and a hope that a year of experience would translate to more wins.
So far in 2016-17, ASU hockey has just one win in its first full season playing a Division I schedule.
In the team’s defense, ASU scheduled some of the toughest opponents it possibly could have chosen, as its first nine games were all against opponents ranked in the top 20. Later in the year, they’ll play powerhouses like Boston College, Ohio State and St. Cloud State.
Head coach Greg Powers frequently reminds us that the daunting schedule is part of a prescribed plan.
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Powers said after a loss to Michigan. “That young team will be so much better at the end of this year, they’ll be better in a month, they’ll be better when they’re juniors and seniors because of the schedule that we’re playing. I’m proud of their effort. They want more wins. They’ll come, but it’s just minor details that we’ve got to shore up.”
But at what point does experience and tough love turn into success? Perhaps it’s not until Powers can fill his roster with recruits like the few he brought in this offseason – not the least of which have been freshman Tyler Busch (who has tallied four goals already), graduate transfer Robbie Baillargeon (who has six goals) and Joey Daccord (an Ottawa Senators prospect goaltender who frequently bails his team out of opposing scoring chances).
BIG GLOVE SAVE BY DACCORD!
— Sun Devil Hockey (@SunDevilHockey) November 5, 2016
That roster-building process will likely take three to four more years.
Or, maybe the success will come when ASU can shore up its special teams. The Sun Devils penalty kill is negating just 74.2 percent of penalties, while their power play has converted just 8.9 percent of the time.
That has to change.
Coach Powers has also raised grievances about his team’s effort, saying last weekend after back-to-back losses to Harvard that his team had been in a “seven-period funk.”
Against Michigan on Friday, the lone game of that weekend for the Sun Devils, ASU appeared to have fixed that lack of effort. They appeared to be exceptionally aggressive, sometimes even to a fault.
Riley Simpson went down into the boards, and Dylan Hollman appeared to clip Simpson's head with his leg. Looks like everyone's OK.
— Matt J. Layman (@mattjlayman) November 5, 2016
Coach Powers said he was looking for more effort from his team, and he found it in their bout with the Wolverines, the most decorated team in college hockey history. Still, the final score of a 4-1 loss wasn’t the intended result.
Peripheral issues notwithstanding, it seems what will really get the Sun Devils into consistent success will be building a tradition of recruiting top talent. Until then, the current personnel will have to learn by taking lopsided losses to the nation’s top teams.
Sun Devil hockey can get to where it wants to be, just not this year.
Reach the reporter at matthew.layman@asu.edu or follow @Mattjlayman on Twitter.
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