Hockey drops a pair to two in-state rivals
An awesome beat-down of Weber State Division I’s best player by USU’s Paul Reinhardt was the highlight of Utah State’s frustrating 4-2 loss at the Ice Sheet in Ogden.
USU’s team captain Scotty John described the fight: “Usually coach doesn’t like fights and usually we don’t condone them, but I’ll tell you what: It was their best player, number 77 Spaten, and Paul absolutely tooled him. Spaten grappled with him a little bit and got his head between Paul’s legs. When Spaten pulled his head out, he got his helmet ripped off. Paul threw a couple of nice lefts, and he kind of turtled a little bit, so Paul got him in a headlock and was throwing uppercuts and connecting. So basically Paul owned him. I heard Spaten’s face was banged up pretty bad.”
Robert Sutherland, a forward for USU, added that after fighting Reinhardt, Spaten “was a mess. I heard he got a broken nose.”
Unfortunately, Utah State was unable to get traction against the Wildcats for the rest of the game. Penalties were a major stumbling block.
“We got a lot of penalties,” John said. “This whole weekend that was our main theme. We were unable to control ourselves when the other team was controlling themselves.”
Dan Cornelius got the start in goal and performed well, though not well enough to get the win.
“Our goalie played unreal,” John said. “He was standing on his head, and the score could have been a lot worse than it was.”
Utah State’s William “Swede” Winsa spearheaded the USU attack, prompting John to say, “Swede played one of the best games I have ever seen him play. Swede’s skill level is just unreal.”
Winsa and Ryan Osterheldt scored the goals for USU.
UVSC 4, USU 3
The stat sheet, or rather the two stat sheets stapled together, told the story of this game. The alloted space for penalties on the first sheet only got the scorekeeper through the second period, and a second was needed so beauties like Walter Voisard with highsticking, Jay McFadden with holding, or Kent Arsenault with slashing could be recorded for posterity.
With puck-handling whiz Matt Geer and top blueliner Jordan Francom sitting out for personal reasons, and shutdown defender Reinhardt suspended for fighting against Weber the night before, USU came into the game badly short-handed. The absence of passers, skaters and shooters on offense was apparent all night, as USU’s offense looked less like a finely tuned machine and more like a mob of guys hacking at each other’s ankles with only a vague idea of where the puck was at any given moment.
It was Utah Valley State College’s style of hockey game – an ugly, simplistic version of hockey. Without adequate support to set them up, USU’s top-line scorers like Winsa and Arsenault had to try and manufacture goals by diving headlong into the scrum and trying to whack the puck up into UVSC’s zone.
“It was really hard to establish a flow tonight because of the penalty situation,” John, who had one assist, said. “When you’re killing most of the night, it’s hard to get something going. Like you said, establishing something in their zone, we were having trouble, but like I said, it’s because we were always short-handed, so I think the penalties are something we have to deal with.”
The referees called penalties from the drop of the puck to the final horn. Some of the penalties were necessary to keep the rival teams from injuring each other. Some of the penalties had the crowd curious as to what game the refs were watching. And some of the penalties had the crowd absolutely frothing at the mouth.
The most egregious injustice came midway through the second period, with the score 3-1 in UVSC’s favor. Arsenault was checked into the boards right in front of UVSC’s bench area, but when he tried to skate away, two Wolverines insulted the game of hockey by holding his stick. Arsenault pulled, they held, and then the lanky Canadian lost his temper and waded into the mass of UVSC players to retrieve his stick by violent means.
“I figured they were holding my stick so I would go in there and give them a little shove to get my stick out,” Arsenault said. “The ref obviously didn’t see their instigator, but he saw the part where I came in with the push to get my stick.”
The ugly little episode cost UVSC nothing, while Arsenault was hit with roughing and misconduct penalties and took a seat in the penalty box for a protracted period.
“What can you say?” John said, “The ref’s only human, and he missed the call. A lot of us saw it and a lot of people in the stands saw it, but you can’t dwell on it. You have to get over it.”
USU actually came back and tied the score up in the second period with a Maciej Michalik slap shot from the point and a Ryan Osterheldt power-play goal assisted by John and Voisard. But with 4.4 seconds to go, UVSC’s Seth Armitage put the visitors up 4-3, a margin which would pass the test of the scoreless third period.
Greg Finatti, who started in goal for USU and made 39 saves, overlooked the messy penalty situation and USU’s critically undermanned lines, placing the blame squarely on himself.
“I blew the game by three goals that shouldn’t have gone in the net,” Finatti said. “To win a game this year, you can’t allow a weak goal because we only score two goals a game if we are lucky. We haven’t scored all season unless we’re playing University of Utah.”
Finatti reluctantly credited UVSC with playing a “pretty good game, because they knew whose head to get into.” Indeed, the incident in front of UVSC’s bench was not the only case of a UVSC player latching onto Arsenault’s equipment like a crab onto a rock. The big zeros next to Arsenault’s, and to an equal extent, McFadden’s, name in the scoring column were the largest contributing factors for USU’s loss.
The only Aggie who had any measure of success playing UVSC’s pell-mell mockery of ice hockey was Ryan Osterheldt, who manufactured USU’s first goal by bursting out of the penalty box and pushing the puck deep into the UVSC zone, where Wolverine goalie Colin Stebner mishandled the puck behind the net. Osterheldt stayed relentless on the forecheck and kept Stebner scrambling until Jeremy Madigan could arrive to clean up the garbage and score the goal.
“Obviously I’m disappointed,” John said, “but you win and lose as a team, so for what it’s worth, that’s all I can say about it.”
– graham.terry@aggiemail.usu.edu