TURNING UP THE HEAT
Moments after Matt Geer bobbed and weaved down along the boards and flicked a shot past Weber State’s Kyle Gover to give Utah State a last-second win over their rivals Friday night, he met teammates Kent Arsenault and Paul Reinhardt for a celebratory hockey embrace in front of the glass.
It was fitting that the three had a moment in the spotlight before the rest of the Aggie squad mobbed them, because Geer, Arsenault and Reinhardt spent this summer together in Chicago honing the hockey skills which were on display against Weber DI.
The intensive hockey training kept the three Ags sharp all summer, and the results have already been apparent, especially against the Wildcats.
In the waning seconds of the second period Geer dug out a puck from behind the goal line and flipped it up to Reinhardt to give the Aggies a 2-1 lead. Then in the third, when overtime appeared to be looming, it was Geer who ripped out the Wildcat’s heart with his nifty puckhandling and quick shot release.
Days after the end of spring semester, the three formed an eastward convoy with Connecticut-bound Maciej Michalik and drove to the Windy City. While Michalik continued on, Geer, Arsenault and Reinhardt pulled in to Chicago at 2 a.m. and went directly to a hot dog stand by Wrigley Field for a famous Chicago dog.
The three teammates tend to finish each other’s sentences, combining to tell anecdotes in a fashion which makes journalistic attribution a challenge.
“We drove from here to Chicago, we drove straight through,” Geer said.
“Twenty-five, 26 hours,” Arsenault said.
“Yeah, we got into Chicago about 2:30 in the morning and the first thing we did was stop at a hot dog stand right by Wrigley field,” Geer said.
“Then some drunk guy pulls out of the club, he was backing out and he snagged his front end on a fire hydrant and ripped off the front end of his brand-new Mustang,” Reinhardt said.
Although Arsenault said Chicago is a “great city if you like your cold beverages and hot foods,” the real focus was on hockey.
The Aggies competed in two traditional leagues which Chicago natives play in every summer. Geer said “one league was a little more premier. One was kind of bush league, with a little older guys.”
Reinhardt said the competition in the better league was top-notch. “The one [league] that we played in I think every player except for maybe two or three played college hockey.” Some of the Aggies’ teammates were the Heredia brothers, who play for the University of Illinois’ D1 team, and Dustin Zimmer, who plays for Miami of Ohio.
Arsenault took advantage of the lax men’s league rules to play hockey unemcumbered by his least favorite piece of equipment: the face mask.
“I would rather play with nothing than with a cage,” Arsenault said. “It’s just more open, you see the ice a lot better.”
The 5-foot-8 Geer played with a full face cage because “my face is too low to the ground. That’s my money.”
Reinhardt used a half-shield such as is required for junior hockey. Although there was plenty of physical bumping and shoving, (Arsenault got in a fight in the first game and achieved a take-down,) Geer said the men’s league game is more about positional hockey.
“You learn to protect the puck a lot better,” Geer said. “Shield the defender from the puck, keep it on your stick, pass, shoot, score.”
Geer and Arsenault’s ability to pass, shoot and score has already been demonstrated to USU’s early-season opponents. Against the alumni team in the season opener, Geer and Arsenault got a chance to combine on a new move they perfected over the summer: the ‘little how’s she going.’
“At the alumni game,” Geer said, “Kent gave me a pass and I just made one look back at him and he knew. The ‘how’s she going’ is the one where he passes to me, I look back and he just bolts up the ice when the defender comes to me, then I give him a backhand, between the legs pass.” Which Arsenault buried, as is his wont.
Playing hockey is like playing in a band, where the structure of the game plan can be altered and improvised on to take advantage of fleeting openings in the defense, but only if the players on the ice are comfortable with one another. But the Aggies weren’t just building chemisty with each other in Chi-town, they were also learning from their teammates like the Heredias or Zimmer.
“Playing with other players that play at a high level too, they kind of push you to be better. You pick up little things from them,” Reinhardt said.
Arsenault also said that playing all summer in Chicago helped him polish up on “all those little fundamental things that you need.”
Amidst all that learning and praying to the Hockey Gods, the boys found time to do what Aggies do best: win. The Aggies won championships in both leagues and went undefeated, a fine soupçon to improving as players.
Those improvements have already been evident to their teammates back here in Utah.
“There’s a couple of guys on the team that were saying stuff to us,” Arsenault said, “like asking if we were skating all summer and said we had the advantage on them at first when we got here.”
Goalie Greg Finatti, who is familiar with the skills of Geer, Arsenault and Reinhardt, having played with them in juniors and recruited them to come to Utah State, said he feels “more comfortable when they’re on the ice because I know they can put the puck in the net and I know Pauly can stop them. Especially with Francom out of the lineup, Pauly has to step up and be that top two defenseman. They played hockey almost every day back there and they came back a lot stronger. Paul looks a lot stronger and more confident.”
This year’s edition of the Skatin’ Aggies loses a lot of talent, in particular at forward, where Roberto “Bo-Dangles” Leo, Robert Hashimoto and Josh Groves exhausted their eligibility and Michael Filander returned to his native Sweden. Already in the young season, USU has demonstrated that it has enough firepower remaining with Arsenault, Geer, Will Winsa and Jay McFadden to knock off top teams like the Weber D1 Wildcats. The Aggies have also shown that they are not talented enough to get by with a subpar effort, as they were knocked off the next night by the UVSC Wolverines. If the season is to have more ups than downs, it will require players like Arsenault, Geer and Reinhardt to step up into leadership positions vacated by the outgoing seniors.
Arsenault said he and his boys are up to the task. “It’s going to be a bigger challenge this year. We don’t have as much depth as we did last year. Definitely I think all three of us are ready to assume our roles which our team and our coaches expect us to do.”
When asked about the mental challenge of going from a rookie year where they were essentially playing with house money to a second year leadership role where point production is expected, Reinhardt said, “We’re all pretty competitive and the coaches expect us to step up and play big this year, so if we don’t …”
And then Arsenault was at it again, finishing his teammate’s sentence for him: “And we knew that’s what we were expected to do this year so that’s half the reason we trained so hard this summer.”
-graham.terry@aggiemail.usu.edu