For USU and Weber, it’s still hate on ice
After another 11-player brawl with BYU, some may think the Utah State hockey team’s biggest rival had switched from Weber State to the IceCats.
Think again.
“We hate them,” six-year Aggie veteran Aaron Burrell said of Weber State. “I don’t know if you could get any more hate out of this team than hating [Weber’s] D-I.”
Still, the level of BYU’s play has improved over the years, as has the intensity with which the games between the two squads are played, USU players said.
“Their program has really picked it up since I’ve been here,” Burrell said. “We used to beat those guys double-digits some games. Now, they give us a pretty good game.”
In the first exhibition game of the year, the Aggies beat the IceCats 3-2 on a shorthanded goal from William Winsa with 22 second left. The goal came after an 11-player brawl in the second period that started when Utah State’s Roberto Leo knocked BYU goalie Tamio Stehrenberger.
During the game on Friday, the teams once again fought. This time, it was BYU’s Derek Stell who hit Aggie goalie Adam Lain in the face while skating by him. Between the two teams, 15 players have been ejected for fighting against one another this season.
“We took care of them,” he said of the Aggies 12-4 win over the IceCats last Friday. “They’re going to be really fired up the next time we play them. No one likes to get beat like that, either physically or on the scoreboard.”
Not only has USU beaten BYU on the scoreboard in all three meetings this year, but the Aggies also appeared to have beaten them physically in both brawls. As the fans walked into last Friday’s game, they were handed signs of Stehrenberger’s bloody face following the first brawl of the season.
But despite the recent fights with the IceCats, the Aggies still say their biggest rival is Weber State.
“BYU is closing their rivalry with us, but the rivalry with Weber State – the flames will never go down,” Burrell said.
The rivalry with WSU stems back to when the two programs shared the same ice arena in Ogden. USU has only been playing in North Logan since the Olympics built the Eccles Ice Arena for the 2002 Winter Games. USU head coach Jerry Crossley thinks the move to Cache Valley calmed the fire slightly.
“Our move to the new rink here kind of took away a little bit out of it,” he said. “There were a number of years where we had sellout crowds for all those games so it was a great atmosphere.”
Sean Boyle, who played for WSU from 1999-2003 and now coaches the D-II team, hopes that the rivalry will once again be as intense as it once was.
“It was a lot funner back then and hopefully we’ll get back to the same level of heatedness,” he said.
Boyle said he thinks that eventually, the Wildcat D-II team will be bigger rivals with USU.
“Once we do put our team back together and get it equal to Utah State’s level then I think it will go back to the D-II being the more rivaled team because the D-I team is really good,” he said.
But the Aggies don’t feel like the D-II team will ever measure up to them.
“The D-II is just not competition,” Leo said. “I think we could take them anytime. The D-I is a good team. When we beat them, that’s just crap that we get to talk. And it will happen.”
However, Boyle isn’t confident that USU will ever beat the D-I squad.
“Unless they pull in some really good players, or unless Aaron Burrell has a ridiculous game, they won’t beat them,” he said.
Both sides agree that if the Aggies can beat the D-I team, the rivalry will be just as strong as it once was.
“With Burrell and [Nick] Thiros gone next year, if we don’t lose this year than I don’t think we will for a while,” WSU’s Eric Slaughter said. “We shouldn’t lose to them this year, though.”
But until that day comes, Crossley thinks BYU has taken over as USU’s biggest rival and the WSU rivalry will die down after the veteran players leave.
“We’ve got some of the old guys who’ve played in some of the old rivalries and they’re still hanging on to some of that,” he said.
The USU players are not the only ones trying to hold on, though. Slaughter said the Wildcat veterans are trying to pass the rivalry torch to the younger players.
“We try to teach it to the younger guys,” he said. “I think it’s still there between some of the players who have been around a while.”
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu
(Photo by John Zsiray)
Aggie William Winsa goes toward the net during the Aggie´s game agasint BYU on Friday. The Aggies defeated the IceCats 12-4 despite another brawl on the ice. (Photo by John Zsiray)