Hockey destroys two more victims
UVSC 4, USU 11
Jay McFadden had a career night for the Aggies, and USU easily won a tune-up game against in-state rival Utah Valley State College.
McFadden said he credited his linemates for helping him achieve three goals and two assists, the first hat trick of his USU career.
Ordinarily, J-Mac skates with fellow rookies Kent Arsenault and Matt Geer. But Geer has been watching from the stands in a shirt and tie this semester due to some academic troubles, and senior playmaker Roberto Leo has filled that spot with aplomb.
“My linemen helped me out a lot there. With Geer out of the lineup right now, Berto steps in ,and he’s been filling that role and helping us out a lot,” McFadden said.
McFadden scored his first goal early in the second period with USU up 2-0. It was a short-handed goal that came on a nifty move and seemed to totally demoralize UVSC.
“We were on the penalty kill, and Roberto Leo was in the corner,” McFadden said. “With the D-man on him, there was no one in the zone and I rushed. I yelled for him, he saw me coming. He couldn’t hear because the fans were so loud, but he got it to me and I gave [the goalie] a forehand turn real quick and shot it back into the net.”
It was a quick turnaround game for the Ags after beating UVSC 10-3 seven days earlier in the Peaks Arena. The Wolverines weren’t able to bring the margin of defeat any closer to their rivals in the north.
Arsenault, to whom the hat trick is old hat, had four goals and three assists.
“I knew these guys weren’t going to be that good, same as last week, but we’ve still got to come out for 60 minutes and play hard,” Arsenault said. “Tomorrow night is when it really counts, and that’s what we practice for.”
On one sequence, Arsenault demonstrated how totally in control USU was in this game. He took a blind-side hit while fighting for a rebound and got up hopping mad, looking for a call from the ref. Finding none, he simply won the next face-off, took the puck to the net and scored it on UVSC goalie Cory Adkin.
McFadden said he sympathized with Adkin.
“Their goalie definitely saw a lot of shots,” he said. “It’s tough to be a goalie for them. I’ve never played goalie, obviously, but seeing all those shots has got to be tough.”
Geer wasn’t the only Aggie out of the action against his will. Team Captain Scotty John strained his MCL earlier in the week and was unable to go.
“I knew midway throught the week that Scotty wasn’t going to play, and that’s a big blow to our team. I mean, Scotty’s all spirits on our team,” Arsenault said. “He’s our team leader. He’s the guy that gets the guys up before the game and during the game.”
With their team getting butchered out on the ice, the small group of UVSC students who made the drive got into a heated dispute with a few members of the USU-partisan crowd around them. With the crowd applauding, North Park Police officers escorted four fans out of the Eccles Arena. Although no arrests were made, it was the third time in as many games security personnel have intervened in the stands while USU plays a team from Utah Valley.
UVSC players on the ice were getting as frustrated as their fans as the game wore on.
“When a team gets down like that, they’re going to get chippy and try to get in your face and get you off your game. Coach Jerry [Crossley] said don’t bother wasting your time,” Arsenault said. ” We’ve got a huge game tomorrow night. There’s a few guys that got into it with them a little bit, but we were just doing it for a laugh and to get under their skin just as much as they were under ours.”
Against the inferior competition, many Aggies were able to amass gaudy statistics: Leo had a goal and three assists, Robert Hashimoto had three assists, and defensemen Jordan Francom and Paul Reinhardt both had a goal and two assists. Scotty Beard started in nets and faced only 29 shots all game.
Colorado 4, USU 5
Greg “The Force” Finatti was the hero for USU again, putting up a wall in front of the goal with 51 saves and repeatedly bailing his team out from seemingly hopeless situations.
Proving he is a master of understatement as well as the butterfly technique, Finatti said he thought the team played well in defeating the West Division’s No. 1 team.
“It’s nerve-wracking when it happens, like it has four times already this season,” Finatti said of the game coming down to a scrum around a loose puck in front of USU’s net in the final 10 seconds.
It was a game of eerie symmetry. For the second time in seven days, the Aggies beat a high-ranked school from Colorado, getting home-ice revenge wins over Denver University and CU on consecutive Saturdays. In both games USU had more penalties and fewer shots than the enemy but won due to converting their chances when they got them and leaning heavily on “The Force.” The wins allowed USU to move to 3-3 against teams from the state of Colorado this year.
“This team is much better than DU, but when the game got close, we were able to hold them off,” Finatti said.
Kent Arsenault, who had his second hat trick in as many games, said, “I can’t say enough about [Finatti], and I can’t wait to go celebrate with him. He showed up. These are the games. This was a national championship game pretty much. He showed up to play and that’s what’s going to do it for us if we’re going to win nationals this year. That’s where it starts, goaltending.”
Roberto Hashimoto got USU on the board first, slapping a rebound home. Although Colorado’s Jeff Neitenbach tied things up four minutes later, Arsenault scored a power-play goal with 14 seconds remaining in the first to send USU into the locker room ahead.
“A lot of my friends were rattling me about not showing up against big teams, so I wanted to come out tonight and show them who’s boss and lead our team to a big W,” Arsenault said.
USU had to fight for the win without Scotty John again. The captain skated with the team in the first period but then found that his MCL injury limited his lateral movement too much to go on in the physical game. One of the defenders who stepped up in a major way to help make up for John’s absence was Paul Reinhardt. He had one assist, but his biggest contributions didn’t show up on the stat sheet: one of Colorado’s favored tactics was to strike Finatti with their sticks after he made a save, and while all the Aggies came to their goaly’s defense, Reinhardt was most conspicuous.
“[Jordan] Francom told me before that they were going to be coming hard at Finatti so I’ve got to protect him tonight,” Reinhardt said. “You can’t let them come in and whack the goalie. You’ve got to stand up for him and let them know they can’t do it.”
After spending most of the first period in their own zone and being fortunate to come out ahead by one, USU played much better in the second. Arsenault and William Winsa scored before Jimmy Knowlton slipped a power-play wrister in behind Finatti and made the score 4-2.
The Aggies opened the third period on a power play. With just one second remaining before Colorado’s Erik Hausmann would emerge from the sin bin, Kent Arsenault profited from Jay McFadden winning the face-off in CU’s zone and sliced into the crease, skating in front of Colorado’s Mark Torrente and flipping the puck up into the far side of the net.
Colorado tried to stop USU’s scorers from finding the back of the net by alternating Torrente and Danny Akers in-goal, but Arsenault said it wasn’t an effective tactic.
“It doesn’t matter what goalie is in nets because when we’re going, we’re going, and we’re going to fire all night on those guys,” Arsenault said.
After USU took their 5-2 lead, Colorado made their final effort to avoid being upset. The referees gave them a big help by calling Brett Fryslie and Arsenault for slashing within ten seconds and giving the Buffaloes a 1:50 five-on-three power play. Neitenbach scored his second goal, a
nd then Scott Montgomery scored to bring Colorado within one goal with a whopping 16:11 to go.
“Especially when they popped in those goals in the third period, we didn’t fall apart and give up. We just kept going,” Reinhardt said. “We’ve been playing pretty solid D. The forwards have been getting back and helping, and our goaltending has been solid.”
There’s that word, goaltending, again. As time ticked down, Colorado’s intensity rose, yet Finatti had an answer for the Buffs each time they charged, often making saves from flat on his back and in contorted positions.
With the intensity at a boiling point, Neitenbach swiped at Finatti with his stick again and Reinhardt leveled him with a single blow. As the referees sorted the ensuing mess out and dragged Reinhardt, Knowlton and Neitenbach off to the box, a second fight began to brew behind them. Matt Ferris was jawing with a few Buffaloes next to USU’s goal, and more black and gold jerseys were coming out from the Colorado bench. Jordan Francom was skating backwards on an intercept course, and the crowd rose to it’s feet, anticipating a battle royale.
Just when the gloves seemed sure to drop, the referees were able to pull the would-be pugilists apart and prevent a brawl. The length delay and emotional confrontation was just what USU needed after the momentum had seemingly swung all the way over to the Buffaloes. When play resumed, USU was no longer on their heels, and the clock seemed to start ticking down faster.
As they did all game, USU got offensive chances more from fast-break situations than cycling the puck. Hashimoto appeared to have scored another rebound goal late in the third, but the referees waved it off, claiming the goal had been knocked off its anchors before the puck went in.
After a final frenzy of stabbing sticks and flying skates in USU’s zone, the game ended. USU, winners of their last four, left the ice to celebrate.
Asked how USU was able to hold off a talented offensive team like Colorado for the better part of a period with a one-goal lead, Arsenault answered, “It’s all on emotion. We’re a hockey team. You don’t see too many good teams like this that come together whenever the game’s close. 5-4 with ten minutes left, and we showed up and played good defense and got the W.”
-graham@cc.usu.edu