IceCats improving, looking to beat Aggies
Editor’s note: This is part two in a three-part series on Utah’s collegiate hockey programs.
The BYU hockey team was terrible.
“We couldn’t put the puck in the net,” Icecat Darren O’Bray said. “And we’d give up, like, 10 goals a game.”
But all that changed on Oct. 18, 2003, when the Icecats beat the Aggies 5-3 in Provo. It was only the second-ever victory over USU for BYU.
“No one remembered beating Utah State,” O’Bray said. “Beating them last season showed how far this program has come.”
BYU is finally a contender now. Last season, it finished sixth in the West Region – by far its best ranking ever. This season, it is projected at fifth.
“We’ve been getting better every year,” Icecat Mark Ostebo said. “We’ve got a lot more talent on the team.”
USU has seen a definite improvement in the Icecats’ game over the last few years.
“I’ve said for a number of years that team is on the rise,” USU head coach Jerry Crossley said. “They’ve got a great pool of players to pull from and they’re fan base is getting every bit as good as ours now. And the program is just coming together.”
The Icecats are full of new players this season, only returning five players from last season. Most of the new players are freshmen and sophomores.
BYU’s staff has also seen changes and been bolstered by first-year head coach Matt Beaudry.
“I think we’re building on what we’ve been building on for the last few years,” he said. “We’re trying to move forward, not backward.”
“I think the changes are good,” O’Bray said. “The players are happier. There’s a little more focus. There’s a lot better organization.”
Both O’Bray and Beaudry said all of the new players have added a lot to the team.
“We’ve got a lot more offensive power,” O’Bray said. “We’ve got guys who can put the puck in the net.”
O’Bray said that another strength that the Icecats have is their goaltending. Last season, Stehrenberger was on the West Region second all-star team.
BYU’s recruiting has an inherent advantage because it is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. LDS players from all over the country know about BYU. Beaudry said this gets a lot of players from areas outside Utah that want to play hockey for a premier university like BYU.
“Most of the talent that has come has been from word of mouth,” Ostebo said.
That attention has been far-reaching. Nearly all of the new BYU players have come from outside of Utah. The hotbeds for BYU recruiting seem to be Michigan, Minnesota and Canada, all places where hockey is very popular.
But the downside to the BYU program is that it is not recognized by the school. Officially, the team is the Provo Icecats.
“We have a corporate sponsorship with the school this year,” Stehrenberger said. “We have new jerseys that can actually have BYU colors on them.”
Stehrenberger said it is tough to get all the funds necessary without much help from the school, but it is getting better. We can focus on hockey now, and not the financial side of it.”
And it also seems to attract more fans. Ever since last year’s victory over USU, the Icecats have filled the Peaks Ice Arena in Provo for every game against the Aggies.
“We only had a couple hundred people before,” Ostebo said. “We’re getting 15,00-17,00 people for every USU game now. That building gets pretty loud.”
Now that the Icecats feel they have the players and talent to compete, they are making strides to advance to their first-ever national tournament appearance.
“That’s our goal,” Ostebo said. “It’s been our goal all year.”
“I’d say we got as good as a chance as USU does,” Beaudry said. “We’ll have to see how it shakes out.”
The Cougars feel that in order to advance to nationals, it must beat USU this season.
“We have to beat them at least once,” Stehrenberger said. “We have to keep up with the Colorado schools and Utah State.”
BYU will have plenty more opportunities to defeat the Aggies. The teams will play each other three more times after this weekend.
In the first meeting in Logan, the two teams got in an 11-player brawl in the second period when Leo knocked Stehrenberger to the ice. Eight players were ejected as a result.
Ostebo said he thinks that it was an isolated incident that does not reflect the relationship between the teams.
“That stuff happens,” he said. “It seemed like both teams agreed that we’re here to play hockey.”
While the rivalry between USU and BYU continues to grow, Stehrenberger said that before the University of Utah suspended their program, they were the Icecats biggest rival.
“Utah State was always better than us,” he said. “We would get slaughtered by them. Utah was more at our level.”
But, BYU has been on the rise the last couple seasons and shows no signs of slowing down.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu