(Photo: Matt Harden/WCSN)
The Arizona State D2 Maroon hockey team continued its dominance this season by beating Loyola Marymount on Sunday, 9-4.
The Sun Devils moved to 12-0 on the season while the Lions fell to 2-6-2.
“It’s always pretty cool,” head coach Tait Green said about being undefeated. “You don’t get to do that often, it doesn’t happen often. We’ve got ourselves off to a good start.
“It’s a good feeling, but there’s a lot of season left to played.”
John Godfrey put the Sun Devils on the board first with a goal at the 19:17 mark, the assist coming from Ross Bowden.
But the Sun Devils’ offensive attack was stagnant for the rest of the period, and the Lions made them pay with an equalizer from Kyle Martins at 13:14 to tie the score at one.
The second period was uneventful for over 18 minutes, as there wasn’t one penalty, a rare feat for games ASU has played in this year. But that changed at 1:45 when Trevor Tracy of LMU was called for charging, giving ASU a power play for the rest of the period.
Playing a man up, the Sun Devils took advantage in the form of a Marcus Velasco goal off of a deflection in front of the net, giving the Sun Devils a 2-1 lead after two periods.
Through the first two periods, the Sun Devils completely controlled the game even though the score didn’t reflect it.
“There’s days when the goalie is going to make a lot of saves like that,” Green said. “You can’t stop, you can’t really change anything. I think we put up 60 shots on goal. (We have to) just keep going, just keep going, and hopefully once one gets through, you see what happened.”
Green’s message worked in the third period, as the Sun Devils buried the Lions by scoring seven goals in the final period.
LMU also scored three goals in the final period, including two more from Martins, giving him a hat trick on the day.
Next week, the Sun Devils travel to Utah to compete in the Beehive Classic where ASU will play four games in four days.
“We have a big invincibility factor going on right now,” ASU goalkeeper Matt Inglis said. “We’re going to play some pretty good teams up there and it’s going to be a real big test for us right now.
“This is probably the biggest weekend of our whole season.”
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