The Arizona State Sun Devils Hockey team released its home schedule for the 2016-17 season on Wednesday.
After playing their first full season in Division I last year, the Sun Devils will look to build off their young talent and bring a new level of excitement to the Valley this upcoming season.
Home opponents for the 2016-17 season will include: Air Force, Brown, Colgate, Harvard, Michigan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Simon Fraser University (Canada), Saint Cloud (MN) and University of Connecticut.
Although most of those opponents are unfamiliar foes, the Sun Devils faced UConn, RPI and Saint Cloud last season. ASU was swept in a two game series at RPI in December, and suffered the same fate in Saint Cloud, Minnesota in January. ASU also lost all three of its games in the Valley against UConn last season, two of which were in the Desert Hockey Classic.
The full schedule with dates and times will be finalized and released in June.
New Recruits
ASU will look to change the script after a season in which they played the vast majority of their games away from home. The Sun Devils finished the 2015-16 season with a disappointing 5-22-2 record. A bright spot was Jordan Masters, who not only led the team with 22 points, but was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, given to the nation’s top player.
Along with Masters and a monstrous of talent around him, the Sun Devils brought in eight new faces to the squad this off season.
One of those new faces is Georgy Gorodetsky, who hails from Yekaterinburg, Russia. He comes to ASU after spending the last two seasons in the United States Hockey League (USHL) with Des Moines. He was a part of Russia’s U20 National Team in 2014.
Another fresh face to the squad is goaltender Joey Daccord. He was drafted by the Ottawa Senators in the seventh round (199 overall) in the 2015 NHL Draft. He'll join returning goaltenders Ryland Pashovitz and Robert Levin.
Reach the reporter at wbdewitt@asu.edu or follow @WestonDeWitt on Twitter.
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