It’s these days, at the business end of the college hockey season, when coaches really bang the drum to get their players geed up for what’s left.
On Tuesday, Arizona State coach Greg Powers used his weekly press conference as a soapbox.
The Sun Devils are now firmly on the NCAA tournament bubble, 15th in the PairWise Rankings following an overtime defeat and shootout win last weekend at Minnesota Duluth. The Bulldogs are 18 points below ASU in the NCHC standings, and at 40th in the PairWise, they would need to win out to make the national tournament themselves.
ASU isn’t in quite that situation. But ahead of a home series this weekend with No. 3 Western Michigan and then two road games against a surging Omaha squad to wrap up the regular season, Powers is taking a pressure-makes-diamonds approach.
“We need to have fun with this,” he said. “We’ve earned this. This is a great opportunity. This is what this program has built for and towards for the last decade, to be in a league and be in late February in front of what’s going to be a sold-out crowd against one of if not the best team in the country to date and have it within our destiny and our control to take the season by the throat. That’s what we have. That’s a pressure that you can only look at as a privilege.”
In its first season in any NCAA-sanctioned league, ASU sits five points behind NCHC leader Western Michigan. The Sun Devils had won three of their last four games, including an overtime loss Feb. 7 at defending national champion Denver, but they’ll want portions of last weekend’s series in Duluth back.
The Bulldogs scored first in both games, and two power-play goals Friday contributed to UMD’s 3-2 win. ASU then led 3-2 past the halfway point of Saturday’s rematch, thanks in part to two Artem Shlaine goals, but couldn’t put the game away in regulation or a five-minute overtime.
But again, Powers looked on the bright side.
“Duluth’s a hell of a team,” he said. “I’ve said it for a long time, since we played them here (with ASU winning two close games in December), I just think that they’re way better than their record. A lot of draft picks, a lot of high draft picks, a lot of really talented kids, obviously a legendary coach (in Scott Sandelin), a program that has won three national championships in the last decade, and what’s perspective, I think, is feeling a little disappointed going on the road to such a good program and getting three out of six points and not feeling content.
“I think that speaks volumes about, most importantly, where our players have put ourselves in position this year. This is what I said to them today. I said, ‘Hey, if you go back to November, after our first Omaha loss, we’re 3-7-1, and over the course of our next 20, we’re gonna go 14-4-2. Three of those losses are gonna be in overtime, one’s gonna be with a 4-1 lead that we kind of stunk away, and put ourselves in a position to be where we need to be, if we have success over the next four games, from a PairWise standpoint, to get into the NCAA tournament, which we are where we need to be, to still, if we have a great weekend this weekend, take over first place in the conference.’ There’s not a guy in this room, including myself, that wouldn’t have taken that.”
The Sun Devils, and teams in similar situations in the PairWise, don’t have use now for looking too far ahead. What better way, then, to approach what will be two of the country’s biggest games this week?
“We’re a clear second-place team, with still an opportunity this weekend to reclaim first,” Powers said. “We have a target on our backs, and I think they’ve done a tremendous job. We came into the season kind of being on the hunt, and to their credit, and it’s all because of the players, they’ve turned the season around and became the hunted.
“That’s an exciting thing. It’s what we want. It’s what we want to be: we want to be front-runners, we want to be a top-10 perennial program here that’s fighting to get into the Frozen Four every year, and that’s where we think we are.”
