BOSTON – The road warriors are back, baby! The Arizona State men's ice hockey team is packed and prepared for takeoff - complete with last weekend's monumental sweep of No. 9 Cornell in its pocket. Sun Devil Hockey (12-10-0) travels east for the third time this season in anticipation of a series against Hockey East's Boston University (7-9-3).
The Terriers play host to the Sun Devils at Agganis Arena on Friday, January 7, and Saturday, January 8. Puck drop on Friday is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. MST and streamed on College Sports Live. Saturday's puck drop is slated for 5:00 p.m. MST and viewed via a NESN+ subscription.
The sweep against Cornell improved the Sun Devils to 12-10-0 on the season and 10-4-0 at home. The two top-10 wins left ASU just one spot out of the top-20 ranking after receiving 27 votes in this week's polls and bumping them up to 25 in the Pairwise. Last weekend was the first Sun Devil sweep of a top-10 team since November 2019 against then-No. 9 Quinnipiac. This season, ASU is now 5-7 against ranked teams and 5-3 against poll teams at home.
Chris Grando tallied three points (1G-2A) last weekend, with his goal coming off of a misread by Cornell's netminder that pulled him to nearly the top of the slot. Grando beautifully stuck with the play and capitalized on the mishandling of the puck, scoring one of ASU's five goals on Saturday night's 5-2 win. Grando led the Sun Devils in points on the weekend with three. Meanwhile, Cole Brady notched 62 saves in his two starts against Cornell to hold them to just two goals in each game.
I'm sorry.. I just hallucinated ??@C_GRAND_3 /// #BeTheTradition pic.twitter.com/Co6GKHzDwH
— Sun Devil Hockey (@SunDevilHockey) January 2, 2022
Other Sun Devil scorers, Matthew Kopperud (12G-13A) and Colin Theisen (13G-12A), each netted a goal in game one against Cornell to keep them tied for seventh place in the NCAA points leaderboard with 25 apiece. But it's not all about the goals to Kopperud, but Coach Powers would have to disagree.
"i don't think about scoring goals.." -@kopper303
— Sun Devil Hockey (@SunDevilHockey) January 2, 2022
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Sean Dhooghe, Michael Mancinelli, and Chris Grando all collected multi-point games in last weekend's sweep as the Sun Devils' eight goals over the weekend were scored by eight different skaters. This past weekend, Johnny Walker returned to the lineup for the first time since Nov. 13, 2021. In his return weekend, Walker tallied two assists, finished +1, and started a two-game point-scoring streak.
BU is 3-4-2 at home, and despite winning at Brown on the road last weekend, BU has not won a home game since early December after an exhibition loss to the U.S. U-18 team and tie against Boston College in that stretch.
The Sun Devils have faced the Terriers four times in the program's history, and the only win comes in the most recent matchup after BU's 3-0 defeat in January 2019.
HISTORY VS. BOSTON UNIVERSITY (4 GAMES)
W, 3-0 - January 26, 2019
L, 2-4 - January 25, 2019
L- 3-4, January 27, 2018
L- 0-8, January 26, 2018