Eight months ago to the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Arizona State Sun Devils were gearing up for a do-or-die game against the Denver University Pioneers.
They had gone 3-1-0 in the regular season, including a series sweep in mid-November. The familiarity between the two teams was there.
The Pioneers came away with a 4-2 win over head coach Greg Powers’ Sun Devils, marking the first time the second ranked team in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference did not qualify for the NCAA Tournament.
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Flashforward to November of 2025, and there was a similar feeling in the air. This time, it was the same result: the Pioneers took game one on Friday night, 7-1, at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona.
“We kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Powers said. “You hate to blame it on goaltending and they’ve been really good for us. I don’t think they were terrible but we need better goaltending than we got tonight.”
The Sun Devils drop to 4-8-1 on the season.
Sun Devils Lose 5-1 to No. 3 Denver Pioneers
The first period kicked off, and the game seemed to go by in the blink of an eye. Only a handful of whistles led to a quick period. Despite the quick period, the Sun Devils trailed 2-0 at the end of the first 20 minutes.
Denver got on board in the second period early, with junior defenseman Boston Buckberger’s third goal of the season to go up 3-0.
“I thought we played really well despite being down one and we give up the goal 10 seconds left,” Powers said. “Then 30 seconds into the second period and it was pretty much game over.”
The lone goal on the night for ASU came from Bennett Schimek. He scored on the power play midway through the second period.
“It’s no secret that we need more depth scoring,” Powers said. “It can’t just be Bennett and Cruz scoring for us every night. We need more out of everybody. We need other guys to step up.”
ASU has yet to be blown out to this extent in a long time. Their worst loss of the season came against the University of Miami (Ohio), 5-2.
“I mean, we just fell under no pressure,” Powers said. “It’s just managing games. We stress the importance of the first two and last two minutes of every period. Clearly, I need to stress it more, because that’s where we lost the game tonight.”
The Sun Devils will be back at it on Saturday night at 5:00 p.m. at Mullett, where they’ll look to split the series against No. 3 Denver.
“They’ve won six straight now,” Powers said. “They went into Western Michigan and swept them. People are going to look at the score, and the score sucks, and the score is embarrassing. I hope it pisses our guys off, and we come back a lot harder.”