Penn State hockey did it again and almost in the exact same fashion on Sunday afternoon as it did on Friday night, beating No. 20 Arizona State 5-4 in overtime following a two-on-one rush.
This time the goal was scored by Connor McMenamin – not be confused Connor MacEachern who scored Friday’s winner – taking a feed down the left side of the ice, ripping it over the shoulder of Sun Devils’ goalie Evan DeBrouwer.
While Friday’s win was dramatic, it didn’t have the trappings of Sunday’s comeback victory. Penn State fell behind 3-0 with just 4:14 gone by on three-straight shots, stunning the Nittany Lions in the process and forcing an early timeout by coach Guy Gadowsky. Goalie Liam Souliere stayed in net, largely left out to dry on a few occasions, unable to make the heroic save to make up for his teammates mistakes. The freshman would end the night with 36 saves.
‘He showed a lot of mental toughness to come back,’ Gadowsky said. ‘And he looked so composed in the third period. I’m really happy for him. The guys found a way to get it done.’
The good news for Penn State trailing by three goals was that plenty of time remained, and as Christian Sarlo picked up the Nittany Lions’ first of the day, the long road to a comeback began.
Of course the problem with comebacks is that they can be easily thwarted, and Arizona State’s goal just three minutes after the Nittany Lions’ did much to erase the positive momentum. That of course was until Nittany Lion captain Alex Limoges took a pass and tapped it into a wide open net to once again cut into the margin to just two goals.
Despite and offensive explosion in the first period that gave the visitors a four-goal opening frame, Arizona State would not score again.
11 seconds into the middle period Aarne Talvitie scored his third of the year on a great individual effort and snipe to make it a 4-3 game with more than half of regulation remaining. Arizona State would lead the shot count 16-12 in the period but Souliere and his teammates did well to hold back the Sun Devil attack and keep the puck out of the net.
The effort on the defensive end was rewarded not long after with Limoges’ second of the night, a beautiful finish on a tick-tack-toe goal on the man advantage. The tally was Limoges’ fifth of the year.
‘Everybody’s coming along together,’ Limoges said. ‘So it’s not just my line, but it’s definitely a lot of fun to to be putting the pucks in net and start winning.’
A fairly tentative third period saw neither team with a significant chance to win the game in regulation, although Penn State did manage a shot through traffic in the final seconds that was smothered by DeBrouwer as the horn sounded.
Just 1:28 later, McMenamin was racing down the ice, and a few strides into the offensive zone he let the puck fly true.
At 3-5, Penn State is hopeful that its current form will carry over into the 2021 portion of the Big Ten slate, although the conference has not yet announced when that will begin. Given the league’s hopes of finishing the season as scheduled in March, the anticipation is that teams will start up play around the same time they normally would following break, roughly sometime in early January.
Whatever the timeline turns out to be, the Nittany Lions are aiming to turn this positive momentum into something that will buck its own trend. Penn State has generally not been great out of the break in year’s past, but the Nittany Lions have also tended to start seasons far better than 0-5.
‘I think last year was better,’ Gadowsky said of coming out of the holiday break, with a laugh. ‘But typically you’re absolutely correct. We have struggled with that. And maybe because this is such a different start and such a different year, maybe that’s what we need to do to have a better start after Christmas.’
In turn, a new found confidence might just lend itself to a more purposeful restart to the season than prior years. Only time will tell.
Bigger picture the Nittany Lions are now 25th in the PairWise ranking with plenty of work to do to get back inside the Top 16 that makes up the NCAA Tournament field. Penn State will return to play at some point with a healthy dose of home dates ahead of them after opening at Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Nittany Lions are – in any reasonable world – out of the conversation for defending their regular season Big Ten crown, miles behind Minnesota which leads the conference at 24 points.
In either case, as a young team continues to grow older, Gadowsky will take as many wins, and character building moments he can get with brighter days ahead.
