ASU hockey was less than a minute away from getting its third win over a ranked opponent this season before No. 9 Western Michigan scored a goal to force overtime.
Overtime would never yield a goal, leading to ASU’s third tie of the season instead of its third upset.
Nonetheless, ASU head coach Greg Powers seemed pleased with his team’s performance.
“(The program)’s come a really long way, obviously,” he said. “We know we can compete with anybody when we play the right way and we play the way we have to. That was a special effort from our guys.”
Though the Sun Devils (10-19-3) won in an exhibition double overtime (played for the sake of a conference point for WMU), the late goal on an empty-net advantage from WMU prevented ASU from earning yet another upset in its first full season of NCAA play.
The first goal of the game didn’t come until the second period, when freshman forward Tyler Busch gave ASU its first lead of the weekend, 1-0. A minute later, freshman forward Colt Conrad tied things up for the Broncos after scoring twice in Friday’s contest.
Things were tied at 1-1 heading to second intermission.
In the third, sophomore forward Jack Rowe scored with less than five minutes to go, giving ASU a 2-1 lead. The Sun Devils appeared close to winning its last NCAA match of the season, but WMU pulled its goalie to get a 6-on-5 advantage.
With 55 seconds left, Broncos freshman forward Wade Allison knotted things back up.
With 54.4 seconds remaining and an empty net, Allison snaps one over Daccord as he's sprawled out. We're tied at 2.
— Sun Devil Hockey (@SunDevilHockey) February 5, 2017
Though he allowed the late goal, Joey Daccord made a whopping 54 saves and held the Broncos to 0-for-1 on the power play.
“We knew he had it in him,” Powers said. “He just needed to find his confidence. He did that at Quinnipiac and he carried it over here.”
It was the third straight start for Daccord, who kept things close in Friday’s contest.
“Just incredible. What a great effort by our guys,” Powers said. “It was awesome to end the NCAA portion of our season playing 130 minutes of hockey the way we needed to play to compete against great teams like that. I think the future is very bright for our program.”
Reach the reporter at matthew.layman@asu.edu or follow @Mattjlayman on Twitter.
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