Photo: Courtesy of Denver Athletics
While social media and fans from Denver and Arizona State battled during the week, it was ultimately Arizona State hockey players who defeated the Denver Pioneers on the ice at tiny Oceanside Arena Friday night. It was the Sun Devils forward Johnny Walker with the first two goals. DU’s Jaakko Heikkinen scored in the third period to pull within one goal, 2-1. A penalty on Lliam Finlay with three minutes left in the third period led to a Sun Devils power play goal when a Jack Judson blast caromed off teammate Johnny Walker, past DU goalie Magnus Chrona, and into the net for the ASU’s third goal – which all but sealed the game. The Sun Devils Brett Gruber hammered home the fourth and final dagger on an empty net goal to finish off the Pioneers in the waning seconds.
After the game, DU’s head coach David Carle stated, “We definitely had some looks. We didn’t do a great job taking Debrouwer’s (ASU goalie) eyes away. I don’t think we made life on him overly difficult. They made life hard for us getting up ice. The better team won tonight. We need to come back tomorrow with a more committed effort from everybody.”
Tough night in Tempe #PioneerTogether pic.twitter.com/8HjWo5dZ2K
— Denver Hockey (@DU_Hockey) December 7, 2019
ASU’s goalie, Evan Debrouwer, had a big game stopping 34 shots. Adding to DU’s scoring woes was a 0-5 power play performance.
The Pioneers move to bigger ice tomorrow night at Gila River Arena at 4:30 pm MT .
This was a classic trap game and DU fell right straight into it. Bad ice, bad rink, Twitter war that DU started, post Thanksgiving bloat, motivated opponent. Perfect shitstorm and the Pios got punk’d.
Pios need to put on a much better show in the NHL rink tomorrow. I’m hearing hundreds of Pio fans expected on Saturday afternoon at Gila River Arena.
Our DU Pioneers have gone from a dominant #1 team in the country, to one of the worst teams in the country, in very short order. Carle has some serious work to do. It may seem relatively harmless, given the strong start, but the season could slip away if this trend continues for another few weeks
Monty had some real drinkers, too. Still #4 in pairwise but work to do. I am worried about DU’s lack of size. You can’t coach that and hard to ‘fix’.
‘Stinkers’….but we have drinkers, too.
Anyway you slice it, this is a kick in the nuts. Bad loss. With all due respect, DU has to win these types of games, and these types of losses do worry me. The reality is the halfway point of the season is right around the corner, and the last month has been disjointed and mediocre.
Losing against some tough NCHC foes is one thing, but DU has to play better and beat opponents like ASU.