Florida Gulf Coast ends Arizona States Season

The Florida Gulf Coast Eagles (2-0) hockey team advanced to the semi-finals when they defeated Arizona State University Elite (2-0) 5-2 in West Chester Pennsylvania at the men’s DII college National Championships on Tuesday.  

The rematch of last year’s semi-final featured two of the top three teams in the country and began with a bang. FGCU got on the board just 2:16 in when Mark Arnone put home a rebound off of a Colton Bailey shot. FGCU made it a habit of getting on the board early and playing with a lead throughout the tournament.

“Playing with a lead is huge, instead of chasing the game you can control it and just play the system. In a one game playoff it’s important to get the lead and keep it. We just didn’t get it done.” ASU defensemen Liam Pues said postgame.

Arizona State would respond minutes later as Wes Starr scored a power play goal off of a dump in from Ryan Francis that took a funny bounce off the glass and popped right into the middle of the ice of a tap in.

“Florida was a very disciplined team that executed their game plan extremely well. We couldn’t handle their fore-check and they took advantage of our mistakes.” ASU’s Mike Leone said following the loss.

FGCU would take the lead back at 9:18 of the 2nd period on a two-on-one when Dan Echeverri made a back door pass to Nick Houser giving the Eagles a 2-1 lead over the Sun Devils. Echeverri would then get one of his own with 3:20 left in the 2nd period when ASU got caught making a bad change extending the lead.

Wilson Housley would get ASU back into the game redirecting a point shot from Stefan Valvur 47 seconds later but that would be it for the Sun Devils.

“They played simple smart hockey and really capitalized on their odd man rushes. I think they caught us on an off day.” ASU’s Housley said. “Their transition game was excellent and was very difficult for us to defend.”

Arizona State goalie Lucas Felbel (14-3-0) took the loss saving 31 of 36 shots over the course of the game while FGCU goalie Mike Reed (13-3-0) got the win stopping 21 of 23 shots.

The 3rd period was taken over by FGCU as they would make it 4-2 when Jordan Klotz finished a beautiful passing play between him, Dillon Duprey and Nathan Pelligra. Klotz would get another putting the game out of reach scoring an empty netter with 2:11 left with assists again coming from Duprey and Pelligra.

“The end result is disappointing, we didn’t play bad but we didn’t execute on the opportunities we had. We had a tremendous season that know one can take that away from us.” ASU senior captain Dan Kuenzi said. “We had the right guys, we were hot, it just didn’t work out.”

The loss was ASU’s first in four months ending a 23 game win streak, as well as the season.  FGCU will move on to the next round where they will play Grand Valley University at 12:15et on Wednesday.