Hockey beats Weber State 7-4 both Friday and Saturday
One week after opening its season on the road by outscoring the Broncos of Boise State 18-5 over two games last weekend, the Utah State hockey club played its home opener Friday in the first of two victories over in-state rival Weber State.
The Aggies and Wildcats faced off in a weekend home and home series that saw back-to-back 7-4 victories by Utah State.
Friday’s game opened up with a pair of early goals by Weber State amid a flurry of Utah State penalties. The Wildcats’ early lead came behind a power-play goal by Josh Guidice just more than two minutes into the contest, followed up just four minutes later with a shorthanded goal by teammate Braxton Green.
Utah State, despite nine penalties in the first period alone, kept the lead to just two goals until the final minute of the period when the Aggies’ Jeff Sanders buried an unassisted goal to go into the first intermission trailing just 2-1.
“Initially I guess we started out pretty rough,” head coach Jon Eccles said. “We weren’t in sync.”
That first intermission appeared to do wonders to get the team in sync, as the Aggies cut their second-period penalties down to just two, while the Wildcats found their way to the penalty box four times, including a five-minute major penalty.
Billy Gouthro broke through to tie the game 2-2 with assists from Matt Hamilton and Kent Arsenault just more than 11 minutes into the second period. It wasn’t long after Gouthro’s goal that the wheels completely came off for Weber State in their quest to hand USU its first home loss since the 2008-09 season.
With 5:14 remaining in the second period, Arsenault buried a short-handed goal to put give Utah State a 3-2 lead. By the time the clock read 3:41, Hamilton and Tyler Mistelbacher had each scored to give the Aggies a commanding 5-2 lead.
Weber State’s Chris Deitsch put in a goal just 22 seconds later to narrow the gap to 5-3, but it took Mistelbacher just six seconds to answer that goal and put the Aggies ahead 6-3 going into the second intermission.
The third period saw just one goal for each team and another mountain of penalty minutes for each team, including four game-misconducts issued with just two minutes remaining.
While the Aggies still got the victory and have thus far appeared to be playing to the team’s potential, Eccles said he still sees one area of needed improvement that could have been costly in Friday’s home opener.
“We are really working hard to cut our penalties down,” Eccles said. “The fewer penalties that we have obviously is going to give us more chances to score.”
Cutting down penalties is exactly what Utah State did as they traveled to Ogden for a Saturday night rematch with the Wildcats.
This time the Aggies took a big lead early and never looked back, opening up with first period goals from Arsenault, Mistelbacher and Matt Ferris. Weber State closed the gap to just a 3-2 lead for USU with a late goal in the first period and the opening tally of the second period, but Mistelbacher responded with two more goals in the second period to give him a hat trick for the game and five total goals for the weekend.
Dave Wyman and Jay McFadden both netted goals for Utah State in the third period to run away with another 7-4 win for the Aggies.
The Aggies will put their 4-0 season record to the test next weekend as they travel to Colorado for a three-game stretch against Northern Colorado, Colorado State and the University of Colorado.
– matt.sonn@aggiemail.usu.edu