By
Chris Suffecool
Arizona Daily Wildcat
It was the perfect finish to a nearly perfect season for the Arizona hockey team.
The Icecats swept Arizona State over the weekend - 6-4 and 4-2 - to finish the regular season undefeated at home (17-0-1) and 29-2-1 overall.
Though the wins against in-state rival ASU were a sweet finish to a near-perfect home record, they did not affect UA's playoff status.
The seeds for the American Collegiate Hockey Association national championship tournament - which begins Thursday at the Tucson Convention Center - were established prior to this weekend's series.
Still, Arizona had no intention of taking it easy against ASU.
"It was something we really wanted to try to do this weekend - we didn't want to drop one here like we did at their barn," senior defenseman Ty Brush said. "Hopefully this trend will continue next week. Having an undefeated record here at home is a really big thing for our team."
In Saturday's final regular-season home game, it was the seniors who led the way.
Brush started the scoring with a power-play goal at 5:53 of the first period on assists from senior forward Ed Carfora and junior defenseman Pavel Jandura.
ASU tied the game at one just 30 seconds later.
Later in the period senior forward Paul Dorn scored the first of two goals with a short-handed goal on an assist from Marc Harris to put the Icecats up 2-1. Dorn scored again in the second period on assists from junior forward Mike Graves and Harris.
Icecat scoring finished at 9:29 of the third period when Graves took assists from Dorn and Carfora and put the puck in the back of the net. UA seniors finished the night with three goals and five assists.
UA head coach Leo Golembiewski said the two wins were exactly what the Icecats needed heading into this week's playoffs.
"It was important because it's the momentum we need, we haven't been playing really well," Golembiewski said. "We had a couple of breaks in the schedule, off the first weekend and third weekend of February. It was really important that we put together 120 minutes, I thought all in all we accomplished what we needed to accomplish."
Friday's game was different in terms of the teams' styles of play.
While Friday's game was relatively calm with few penalties, Saturday's game was a heated matchup that featured 24 penalties and six 10-minute game-misconduct penalties.
"It was a pretty peaceful ASU-UA game up until the last five minutes or so," Brush said after Saturday's game. "(Friday) was kind of not really tight checking, one of the nicer games. Then with about five minutes to go (on Saturday) they started getting a little chippy, running some of our guys. Two minutes to go, they ran our goalie and all hell broke loose."
Brush was referring to several fights that broke out at 17:24 of the third period when an ASU player cross-checked UA goalie Jason Morgan after Morgan had secured the puck and the whistle had blown.
From there fights broke out involving all of the players on the ice, and several players were tossed from the game.
Fortunately for the Icecats there were no game-disqualification penalties, which would have meant mandatory suspensions for the first game of the national tournament this weekend.
The Icecats will have all of their players available for their first game, which will come against No. 10-seed Kent State Friday.
Harris said he hopes that the ACHA Tournament crowds rival those of the weekend.
"The crowds Friday and Saturday were unbelievable," Harris said. "I hope they're like that for nationals. It was very exciting, I had a blast playing. It was a very emotional weekend for me. I'm all smiles now, but in the locker room I'm going to be a little sad, but it isn't my last game here. We've still got nationals."
