Home sweet home had to have a welcome ring to it for the San Diego State University men’s ice hockey team after six games on the road to face off their inaugural season in the Western Collegiate Hockey League.
The Aztecs failed to pick up a win in the six away games while seeing their overall record dip to 2-6 on the season following a 0-6 start to conference play.
Mixed in were some competitive games (5-2 loss to the University of Arizona) and not-so-competitive games (15-0 loss to the University of Utah and 11-0 to Grand Canyon University).
The Aztecs faced a Western Michigan team facing its own share of adversity with a 0-8 start.
Now make that 0-10 after SDSU claimed 6-4 and 4-3 victories against the Kalamazoo visitors.
Second-year Aztec Kolby Hennessy turned in a big weekend for the Aztecs with one goal and one assist in the Friday game and two goals in the Saturday rematch. Hennessy notched a shorthanded goal in Friday’s series opener to stake the hosts to an early 2-0 lead. His second goal of the game on Saturday, on a power play 25 seconds into the third period, tied the game 3-3 as SDSU (4-6) battled back from deficits of 2-1 and 3-2.
Team scoring leader Cameron Ferraz had a productive two games with one goal and three assists while Luke Desmarais duplicated that four-point effort.
Connor Hennigan dished out three assists while Patrick Fast had two goals, including the game-winner on Saturday at 11:31 of the third period. Drew Gunderson had a goal and assist, Patrick Morris, Zach Stroozas and Lucdas Bellig each collected two assists, Brandon
Grant and Max Kathol each had one goal and Sean Devaney added one assist.
Twelve players recorded points.
Liam Dee made 42 saves on 46 shots to register the goaltending victory in the first game and stopped 36 of 39 shots to notch the win in the rematch.
Grand Canyon (No. 12), Utah (No. 15) and Arizona (No. 17) are all nationally ranked. The Aztecs are the new kids on the block.
“We played some tough teams on the road, top team,” SDSU coach Dean Wilson said. “It’s really good hockey we played. We’re happy our guys showed up. It’s our home barn. We had a little adversity. We had a lot of injuries. We had different guys out of the lineup. It’s difficult to get any chemistry with the lines different every night.”
SDSU built a 5-0 lead in the series opener to snap the losing streak.
“It’s huge for us coming out of that little slump,” Hennessy said. “We’re still a young team with a lot of room to grow.”
“It was good,” said Devaney, an Otay Ranch High School alumnus. “The WCHL, all the teams over here are top 25. Every game’s a battle. With Western Michigan, we thought we could take advantage of them flying all those miles here and get on top of them. Get the puck in, hammer them. It’s tough with guys going down every week with injuries. But we all try to play our parts and keep going on all cylinders.”
Protect the nest
The San Diego Gulls picked up their first win of the season, 3-2, in overtime on Saturday as rookie Yegor Sidorov scored twice, including the OT game-winner.
The Gulls faced off their 2024-25 home slate with a 6-5 loss to Coachella Valley, The Gulls showed some grit by storming back from a 6-1 deficit through two periods with a 19-3 edge in shots and 4-0 edge in goals in the third period to fall short.
The Gulls (1-3) now embark on a four-game road series in Canada before returning home on Nov. 2.
