After an early lead by Air Force, Arizona State came back to win 5-2 in the championship game of the Desert Hockey Classic on Saturday at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona.
Nick Remissong put Air Force ahead just 1:44 into the first period, with assists from Aidan Willis and Brendan Gibbons. Arizona State responded with two goals from its top line. Cullen Porter tied the game at 9:45 on a power play, and Bennett Schimek gave ASU a 2-1 lead late in the first period.
ASU increased its advantage midway through the second period when Logan Morrell scored another power-play goal. Early in the third period, Mason McCormick cut ASU’s lead to 3-2 for Air Force after receiving a pass from Chris Hedden, with goalie Dominik Wasik earning his first career assist. However, Carmelo Crandall quickly answered for ASU and later added an empty-net goal to secure the win.
Air Force outshot Arizona State 18-4 in the third period and 35-23 overall but could not overcome ASU’s special teams performance. The Sun Devils converted two of four power-play opportunities while holding Air Force scoreless on its own man advantages. Wasik made 18 saves for Air Force; Connor Hasley stopped 33 shots for ASU as they won their home tournament for the third consecutive year.
“ASU has a tremendous amount of speed and skill and we needed to counter that with good, honest, hard hockey,” head coach Frank Serratore said. “We did that at times, but we didn’t do it enough. A big part of the game was their dominance on the faceoff dot. That enabled them to have a lot of in-zone time. Give them some credit, they fell behind but they got back in it with their special teams. Overall, we played pretty well and I would like to think we learn from this game and we will be a better team moving forward into conference play.”
Air Force will resume conference games with a home series against Bentley scheduled for January 9-10 at Cadet Ice Arena.
