Sun Devil Hockey is about to begin their first full NCAA Division I season. Arizona State will be taking on some of the nation’s top teams this year, including Notre Dame, Northeastern, Harvard, Michigan, and Boston College.
Arizona State Men’s Ice Hockey will play 34 regular season games this year. Only 13 of their games will be on home ice, including the four games the team will play at Gila River Arena, home of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes, in Glendale, Arizona. The Gila River Arena holds a greater amount of seating and offers a more professional atmosphere than the one at Oceanside Ice Arena in Tempe where the team will play their other nine home games.
The Sun Devils have a two-game series at Gila River Arena against Air Force, Oct. 14 & 16. They play there again against No. 12 Harvard on Oct. 28. The last, and likely drawing the biggest attendance, is against No. 11 Michigan on Nov. 4.
Head coach Greg Powers will be going into his ninth overall season as a coach for Sun Devil Hockey and his second as head coach with the NCAA Division I Hockey team. Last season, Powers led the team to a 10-23-5 record while facing their hybrid schedule between ACHA Division and NCAA Division I Hockey opponents.
Prior to last season, the Sun Devils fully competed in ACHA Division I hockey, but last season began the switch to a NCAA Division I program by facing NCAA DI schools, but still had some competition against ACHA DI schools to round out the schedule.
Assistant coaches Mike Field and Alex Hicks will join Powers. The Sun Devils also brought in former NHL defenseman Garnet Exelby as the strength and conditioning coach at the beginning of the summer.
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The team will be led, this season and in the future, by junior forward Dylan Hollman. He will be joined by alternate captains, senior forward Ryan Belonger and sophomore forward Louie Rowe.
Arizona State will not have a designated starting goaltender this season. The team has a three-man rotation between sophomore Ryland Pashovitz, freshman Joey Daccord, and senior Robert Levin. Pashovitz and Daccord will be starting a majority of the time, and Levin will also get playing time.
Daccord is the first Sun Devil to be drafted to the NHL (Ottawa Senators in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft) with only Arizona State collegiate experience. Forward Wade Murphy has also been drafted (Nashville Predators in 2013).
The Sun Devils have added some new talent to the roster for the 2016-2017 season. Over the summer, the team brought in graduate transfer forward Robbie Baillargeon from Boston University, a three-year starter for the Terriers. He is a 2012 5th round draft pick by the Ottawa Senators of the NHL.
Freshman Forward Georgy Gorodetsky, born in Yekaterinburg, Russia, will be playing in his first season at Arizona State. He is the first player to ever commit to Sun Devil hockey not originally from North America.
The second annual Desert Hockey Classic in Prescott Valley, Arizona, will be held on Dec. 30 & 31. There are four teams participating: Arizona State, Brown University, UCONN and St. Cloud State. The Sun Devils will face off against Brown, and UCONN will play St. Cloud State on Dec. 30. The final will be on the 31st.
Arizona State will play a two-game series against a Canadian university, Simon Frasier, in February. They will also play the U.S. National Under-18 Team in back-to-back games at the end of the regular season.
The Sun Devils will have a prime time game this season against Ohio State on Saturday, Jan. 14. The game will be televised nationally on ESPNU and WatchESPN.
Arizona State will start off the regular season this weekend with a two-game series against No. 9 Notre Dame at Compton Family Ice Arena in South Bend, Indiana. The first game is on Friday, Oct. 7th, at 4:35 p.m. MST. The second game will be on Saturday, Oct. 8th, at 4:05 p.m. MST. Both games will be streamed on NBCSports.com.
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The 2016-2017 season will challenge the Sun Devils as they take on the first full season of NCAA Division I Hockey. The team will look to compete with the bigger programs and put Tempe, Arizona on the map of NCAA hockey.