Final games: Hockey team finishes out season home this weekend
Two seniors will play their final games for the Utah State hockey club this weekend as the team will face the Weber State Division-I squad Friday and Saturday.
Friday’s game will be at the Eccles Ice Center at 8 p.m. and Saturday’s will be at the Weber County Ice Sheet at 7:45 p.m. They will be the last games this season for USU.
Nate Pierce and Chad Johnson have both been on the team since the 2000-01 season.
“They both mean a lot to the team,” Aggie Scottie Beard said. “They’ve both been here for a while. It will be hard to fill their shoes.”
Beard said it will be tough for the Aggies to stay focused this weekend because the games don’t mean anything. USU lost at the regional tournament last weekend meaning it will not go to nationals, which is what this weekend was supposed to prepare the team for.
“It will be an interesting game,” Beard said. “Weber’s going to nationals, so we’ll see if they decide to play their top line. If they don’t, it will be like the last game we played.”
The last time these teams met, WSU’s top line did not play and the Wildcats won only 3-1. At the beginning of the season, when the Wildcats did play their top line, they beat the Aggies 10-2.
USU has never beaten the upper-division WSU team.
But a sad ending to this season isn’t going to spoil the six-year careers of Pierce and Johnson.
Chad Johnson
Johnson said the games this weekend might be somewhat emotional for him.
“These are the last two games of my college career,” he said.
Johnson is one of the final students at USU to graduate with a degree in welding engineering technology. He said if he has the opportunity, he will try to continue playing hockey at a higher level.
Two Aggies from last season are playing professional hockey in Europe this season, which is something Johnson said he hopes he’s good enough for.
“We see how that turns out,” he said. “It will take some work to make sure I’m in shape to play at that level. But you can do anything you set your mind to.”
Johnson said he will miss the camaraderie of the team the most.
“These are lifelong friends you make,” he said. “You’re still friends after, but it’s not the same.”
The two moments in Johnson’s career that stick out the most are USU’s 8-7 come-from-behind win over WSU in 2004 and upsetting Indiana 11-6 at the national tournament last season.
“I’ll remember those games for the rest of my life,” he said. “There are so many good memories.”
Nate Pierce
Pierce said there’s a lot of things he’ll miss about USU hockey.
“The players, the coaches, the competition, the noise, the road trips – the list goes on forever,” he said.
Pierce said the highlight of his college career was going to nationals four of the six years he played.
Even though the team didn’t make it this season, Pierce said he still feels like it was a good season.
“We had a chance to play games we wouldn’t have played last season [at the regional tournament],” he said. “We turned our season around.”
Pierce graduated last season with a degree in mechanical engineering and is currently working toward a master’s degree in mechanical business administration.
He said his hockey career will end at USU.
“I want to start my career and a family,” he said.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu