Arizona State coach Greg Powers didn’t mince words, about anything, during a Monday press conference after his Sun Devils made two signature wins last weekend at top-ranked Denver.
Even when he was asked what he misses about the since-demolished Oceanside Ice Arena, ASU’s former home that sat fewer than 800 fans, Powers was deadpan in his delivery.
“Nothing,” he said. “I miss the asbestos falling from the ceiling when the puck hits it, and having to scoop it off the ice. I don’t miss anything. That’s the honest answer.”
Powers was clearly feeling good about his team’s current situation, as he, and they, should be. Their 3-2 win Friday at DU’s Magness Arena ended the Pioneers’ recent 21-game winning streak, one away from tying a 56-year-old school record. Arizona State kept pushing the following night, beating the Pioneers 5-2 to move into second place in the NCHC standings.
Pretty good for a Sun Devils team in its first season in a NCAA Division I conference, following nine seasons in the independent wilderness after having had a club program since 1983. Add in the fact that the Sun Devils had been without half of their top six forwards each game until last weekend, and those wins over DU become even more satisfying for Powers, now in his 16th season behind ASU’s bench.
But at the same time, he’s not about to let his team get comfortable.
“There’s a lot of sizzle to the weekend we just had,” he said. “The unanimous No. 1, 21-game win streak Denver had, defending national champs, I don’t think they’ve been swept since pre-COVID at Magness. There’s a lot of significance, and what I told our guys was, ‘Look, this can be a benchmark sweep, but it’s all going to depend on what we do with it. Do we want to be a team that looks at this weekend and, at the end of the year, talks about a sweep we had at No. 1 Denver, or do we want to be a team that actually uses it and makes something about it?’
“That’s going to be the challenge moving forward, is being proud of what we did, and it’s very tough to do, not many teams have done it, but now it’s, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ That’s the way this world works, unfortunately, but we have to parlay these two wins into something special.
“The results that we achieved this past weekend, there’s not a guy in our room that was surprised by them. We know what we’re capable of. We have a really, really good hockey team that’s been insanely banged up. That’s the healthiest we’ve been all year, and boy, when we get (Cruz) Lucius back, it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
ASU (6-7-1 overall, 3-3-0 NCHC) had recently lost three straight and five of its past seven games, before beating Omaha on Nov. 16 in the back half of a home series. Artem Shlaine’s second goal of Friday’s game in Denver put the Sun Devils ahead for good with less than a minute left, and he scored twice again Saturday to cap a pair of good team performances.
“We just managed the puck really well this weekend,” Powers said. “At the end of the day, we’re obviously very excited about the results that we got against a very good program, but we didn’t play any differently than we have in the last month. It was carbon-copy, (and) we finally got the results.
“I’m proud of our guys because they stuck with it, but we have been playing, by and large, the best hockey, structurally and almost every way, since we’ve been a program but just weren’t getting the results, and we did this weekend, and it feels good. Happy for our guys.”
Injuries have had an outsized effect on ASU’s forwards so far this season, and that remains an issue. Shlaine missed the Sun Devils’ first six games this season, Charlie Schoen has been out since the end of October, and Lucius is yet to play for his new team after posting 13 goals and 34 points last year for Wisconsin.
To that end, for as much as Powers said that he wishes his team was playing this weekend so as to keep its momentum rolling, being idle until a home series Dec. 6-7 against Minnesota Duluth isn’t such a bad thing.
“We’ve got to get through two more games,” Powers said of ASU’s slate before the upcoming holiday break. “We get an off week this week to heal up some bumps and bruises, and we’ve got to finish strong. When we get a full roster back, I would not want to play us.”
Certainly not, when the vibes are what they are right now. But for as much as the Sun Devils had been building up to last weekend’s big wins, Powers knows his program has generally been on the right track longer than most outsiders know.
“It goes back to just not straying from what has brought us success, and that’s a blue-collar mentality,” he said. “Now we have the resources of Mullett Arena, we have the support of an unbelievable institution that we didn’t have back in the day when we were not varsity, (and) we’re in the best conference in college hockey.
“We have everything we need, and now it’s Chapter 2: Banner-hanging mode. Chapter 1 is behind us and we’ll never forget it, but we never want to lose what got us here.”
