Hockey: Aggies swept in road stint
The Aggies played Eastern Washington Thursday night, losing 5-4 in overtime. Friday night’s game was just as dismal with Aggies losing to the Idaho Vandals 5-1. The weekend finished with Aggies again losing to Eastern Washington 5-3.
“It was a pretty rough weekend,” said team manager Jon Eccles.
Thursday night’s loss ended in overtime, when Eastern Washington scored on a power play in the last 30 seconds.
“We got ourselves into a position where we had penalties going into overtime, so we were at a real disadvantage,” Eccles said.
However, Eccles said he felt the team played extremely well.
“It was back and forth pretty much the whole game,” he said. “They would score, then we would score. We played really hard and finally tied up the game, but we had a couple of misconduct penalties, which are 10 minutes in the box, which ended up hurting us.”
Friday night’s game against Idaho also had painful results.
Eccles said the Aggies have beat the Vandals before; he thinks the team didn’t come out with enough intensity.
“We just got back on our heels and couldn’t recover,” he said.
The Aggies also struggled to come back Saturday night after such a late game the night before.
“I think we played pretty well on Saturday,” Eccles said. “The boys were just a little tired. Friday night’s game didn’t even start until 10:30 p.m. and then we played again Saturday at 4:30 p.m. That just didn’t give the boys much time to rest.”
Eastern Washington scored the winning goals Saturday night, one on an open net, when goalie Greg Finatti was pulled onto the ice to skate, and the other in the last two seconds of the game.
Eccles said the team will be ready to face Eastern Washington again this weekend at the Eccles Ice Arena.
“I don’t think they are any better of a team than we are, but they did play more aggressively,” Eccles said. “They are a very hard pressing team, sending two players after the puck every time.”
Before Saturday, Eccles said the team will be working on quicker breakouts.
“They had an aggressive forecheck which contributed to their amount of powerplays,” he said. “We just need to come back quicker and stronger.”
The Aggies will play against Weber this Friday in Ogden and against Eastern Washington Saturday at home. Both games will begin at 7 p.m.
–jodi.burton@aggiemail.usu.edu