Last-second goal gives USU a win over BYU
The Aggies kept their bitter rivals, the BYU Icecats, winless in the Eccles Ice Arena when team Captain Scotty John scored with just eight-tenths of a second left in overtime, ending a harrowing game by a score of 3-2 and igniting a massive on-ice celebration.
After taking a pass from Kent Arsenault, who was up along the boards, USU rookie Ben Tikka controlled the puck down behind the goal line and fired it into the slot, where John was lurking.
“I was kind of hanging around in the high slot, and all I’m thinking about is how much time is ticking off the clock,” John said, describing how his OT game winner came about. “Kent gets it down to Tikka in the corner, and Tikka’s got it, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I hope he can get it to me.’
“He makes the pass right on my tape. Somehow it squeezes through everyone and right there’s for me to put it into a wide-open net. We were down and I wanted to get us back, and I was joking with the guys like, ‘Guys I’m scoring the game winner,’ so when I was down there I was like, ‘This is going to happen, this is going to happen.’ And then it did. Unreal.”
It was a baptism by fire to the BYU-USU hockey rivalry for Tikka and the other rookies. Tikka, who took on the role of play maker with three assists, said he had no idea how much time was left when he made the game-winning pass in to John.
“I looked at the clock before we started playing that shift, but other than that you just go balls out,” he said. “I was surprised after we scored when I looked up.”
The teams traded power-play goals in the first period. Arsenault got USU on the board first when he sniped the far corner of the net with a wrist shot that made BYU goalie Ben Shapiro irrelevant. After scoring, the Canadian made a circuit around the rink, pumping up the crowd enthusiastically.
Roughly one minute later, however, the crowd was hushed when the Icecats dug a puck out of the corner and set up a one-timer for Ben Shugart to put behind USU’s Greg Finatti. The 1-1 score after one period was somewhat misleading, as USU dominated control of the puck and kept it deep in BYU’s zone for the most part.
It seemed like the Icecats might be on the verge of their first-ever win in USU’s barn in the second period when penalties became a problem for the Ags and BYU Brandon Holmes flipped a shot past Finatti while on a rush. Utah State had numerous chances to tie things back up, but luck was on Shapiro’s side, never more than during one sequence that occurred while USU was killing a penalty: Shapiro came out to gather a loose puck but underestimated the great speed of Arsenault and found number 22 bearing down on him. Arsenault poked the biscuit away from Shapiro, but the puck flouted the laws of physics and trickled into the post.
Arsenault said it was one of the worst robberies of his hockey career.
“I went down to try and give it a little poke and it turned out pretty good,” Arsenault said, “it rang off the post, but nothing really came of it.”
In the tunnel during the final intermission, Finatti was overheard telling his teammates, “You guys had better get two goals or you’re never going to see me again.” Whether it was because they wanted to keep their star goalie in the fold or because they hate BYU with an overpowering passion, his teammates responded.
Arsenault struck again midway through the third period, using a nifty backhand to mystify Shapiro and erase the memory of his missed opportunities. This equalizer set the stage for the dramatic overtime period.
USU was minus top-line center William “Swede” Winsa, who sat out this weekend’s games with mononucleosis. Paul Reinhardt provided much-needed relief to the tightly stretched defensive rotation when he suited up during the second intermission and contributed several key late-game shifts despite his broken appendage.
“Swede is such a huge loss,” John said. “Everybody has got to pick up the slack. It’s tough, but those types of games, when you win them, you can’t even describe how it feels because everyone pulled together and worked hard for each other.”
BYU had five tripping penalties in the game, further advancing the team’s reputation for dirty play. Most of the Utah State penalties, by contrast, were assessed for solid hits, with roughing, holding, interference, charging and boarding typifying the calls made against the Aggies.
“It’s just to be expected,” John said of BYU’s low-down tactics. “For my part, I thought it was less, but from how the guys were talking, I’d say it was the same. I don’t know what it is about those guys, but for some reason they just get chippy and they get cheap. I think what it really is is they’re not as physical and they use their sticks more. We hate them, they hate us.”
FRIDAY NIGHT
Arsenault completed a hat trick with one minute to go in the third period to keep the outcome of Friday night’s game in doubt, but Weber State scored an insurance goal on the open net to win, 7-5, in the Eccles Ice Arena.
USU won the first period 1-0, with Arsenault scoring shorthanded thanks to assists from Jay McFadden and Maciej Michalik. But then the Aggies suffered what starting goaltender Dan Cornelius termed “a lapse” in the second period, when Weber scored five times.
“I should have had them,” Cornelius said of the goals Weber scored during its outburst. “At the same time, the team kind of messed up.”
Jeremy Madigan and McFadden scored in the second to keep USU hanging around heading into the third. Arsenault scored his second goal early in the third, bringing the Ags to within one heading down the back stretch. That was when things got interesting.
With 1:27 left, Weber’s Chris Cotsilis scored unassisted to make it a 6-4 game. Arsenault answered for USU 22 seconds later, bringing his team within one again and prompting Head Coach Jerry Crossley to pull Cornelius in favor of an extra attacker. Playing six on five, the Aggies couldn’t keep the puck in Weber’s zone, and Nick Micek put the puck in USU’s unmanned goal.
“That’s the worst,” Cornelius said of being forced to watch as Micek scored easily. “I actually feel like jumping over the bench and knocking it away.”
USU-Weber games are always hard-fought, but there was an extra measure of bad blood between the the teams this time due to Aggie defenseman Paul Reinhardt’s use of Weber’s Mike Spawton’s face as a landing strip for his crashing fists during the last meeting. The Wildcat skaters felt Reinhardt ought to have removed his helmet before bashing Spawton, while Reinhardt said he never had a chance to remove his headgear when Spawton picked the fight.
Reinhardt sat this game out with a wrist broken in a separate incident, but the acrimony was still evidenced by the numerous penalties called throughout.
USU’s Robert Sutherland said, “They say that it was a dirty fight, but they realize it was a hockey fight. Leave it on the ice. We take it out on each other. They’re a chippy team. That’s always how it’s going to be because we’re such big rivals.”
Cornelius said the physical game was nothing out of the ordinary.
“There was four or five scrums in front of the net after the whistle,” he said. “Lots of stick work. I got run over a few times. The normal stuff happens.”
-graham.terry@aggiemail.usu.edu