Hockey team suffers disappointing road trip
The Utah State hockey club missed a chance to seal up a bid to nationals by losing 8-0 to San Jose State and tying Cal-Berkeley 2-2 last weekend.
While the loss to SJSU looks bad, the Aggies believe the game last Saturday was much closer than the score.
“Eight to nothing sounds really bad, but it wasn’t like that,” Aggie Nick Thiros said. “We dominated them, but they put the puck in the net.”
Goalie Chris Webber said the game looked even everywhere but the scoreboard.
“The game was pretty much even shot wise,” he said. “They just got the lucky bounces. They had guys in front of the net at the right time.”
Going into the third period, SJSU held a 4-0 lead.
But USU dug its own grave by taking too many penalties in the final stanza, Webber said.
“As soon as we got to the third period, we just started racking up the penalties and there was no way we were going to catch up,” he said.
The Aggies were not playing at full strength as team captain Nick Haase and forward Robert Hashimoto were out of the lineup with injuries.
Still, head coach Jerry Crossley said the injuries were no excuse for such a lop-sided loss.
“That was part of the problem, but not all of it,” he said. “Our team is just not working and we have to find a way to fix it.”
The loss will drop USU out of the No. 3 spot in the West Region and SJSU will most likely replace the Aggies.
USU and BYU now sit at a dead heat for the No. 4 ranking and the final bid to the national tournament in March.
Crossley said the Aggies might lose a spot or two in the rankings, but there is a lot of hockey left to be played.
“We’re still in the hunt, but we have to go on a winning streak and beat BYU next month,” he said.
The big test for both the Aggies and IceCats will come in their games on Feb. 11 and 12, as the two teams will face off against each other in the last games before the final rankings are released.
“It’s basically going to come down to that final showdown with BYU.” Webber said. “To solidify that last spot, we have to beat BYU.”
Last Friday, after a long bus trip and a late start, USU came out flat against a Cal-Berkeley team the Aggies beat 7-1 in Logan earlier this season.
“I don’t know which game was worse, the 8-0 loss to San Jose or the 2-2 tie to Cal,” Webber said. “We had 15 more shots than they did, but our penalties killed us. Both the goals they had were on power plays.”
Thiros said USU would have played much better with a healthy team.
“It probably would have made a big difference,” he said. “Switching people up makes it tough.”
Thiros added that the rink which Cal-Berkeley plays at is one of the worst he has ever played in.
“The rink is about as horrible as it gets as far as condition,” he said. “They have a chain link fence as part of the glass in one of the corners. But we should have beat them.”
The Aggies will play at home this weekend with games against the University of Washington on Friday and Saturday.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu