Hockey team shuts out BYU

Goalie Adam Lain posted his first shutout of the season in the Utah State hockey club’s 3-0 win over BYU Saturday in Provo, one night after losing to the Weber State Division-I squad 10-2.

Head coach Jerry Crossley said Saturday’s win was huge when considering how bad the team lost the night before.

“I think that says a lot about our character,” he said.

William Winsa scored a goal and assisted another as the Aggie offense struggled to find a rhythm during the game.

“We don’t really have any breakout players,” Crossley said. “I’m trying to convince the guys to play inside the offense. They keep trying to do individual things.”

Fryslie said even when USU had opportunities, BYU goalie Dustin Van Dyke made big saves.

“Lately, this goalie has had our number,” he said. “We haven’t been able to put the puck in the net.”

Crossley also said the team had been battling sickness earlier in the week.

“It was some kind of cold crap,” he said. “I think it had some effect, but obviously wasn’t the only thing going on.”

But where the offense was lacking, Lain picked up the slack, saving all of the nearly 40 shots taken by the Icecats.

“We really couldn’t take a whole lot of credit,” Fryslie said. Adam played awesome.” Lain said he couldn’t have completed the shutout if the defense hadn’t been playing so well.

“I communicated well with the defense,” he said. “That was key. We like shutting out BYU.”

Fryslie said even though the team didn’t play as well as they would have liked, the Aggies had a better attitude against BYU than against WSU.

“We came into that Weber game a little scared,” he said. “But we came into this game with a chip on our shoulder.”

Defenseman Maciej Michalik did not play much after the first period, which, Fryslie said was mostly due to an injured knee.

Weber State Division-I 10, Utah State 2

The Wildcats scored the first four goals of the game and then scored six times in the final period to hand the Aggies their first loss of the season.

“I’m so mad,” Winsa said. “We can’t play three periods. We played two good ones, then we lost our focus and lost the game.”

WSU scored five of its goals on power plays.

“We keep handcuffing ourselves with penalties,” Crossley said. “We cannot win games like that. We need to be more mentally tough.”

Aggie Roberto Leo said stupid penalties are no excuse to give up on a game.

“Emotions are high and sometimes you do dumb stuff,” he said. “But you still have to rally up around your players.”

Down 4-0 in the second period, Fryslie dumped the puck into the WSU zone, which deflected off the goalie’s stick and into the net, giving USU its first goal. Then with less than a minute to play in the same period, Leo stole a pass at the Wildcat blue line a threw a backhanded shot into the back of the net, making the score 4-2 just before the second intermission.

“We’ll take that stuff when it happens,” Crossley said. “I hoped it would carry over to the third period.”

Leo said USU felt like it was in control going into the third period.

“What we wanted to do was come out and score that first goal [of the final period],” he said. “In that third period, we just fell apart.”

Winsa said if USU had scored first in the last period, the Aggies would have won.

“I think we would have had them,” he said. “But we let them score and just didn’t care after that.”

Winsa said there is nothing talent-wise the Aggies need to improve on in order to beat the upper-division Wildcats.

“We’re not missing anything,” he said. “We’re so good. We just lost it. We can beat them. We proved that we’re better for two periods.”

-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu