Arizona Wildcats: Hockey sweeps NAU Icejacks to open season

No. 20 Arizona made the four hour trip north to Flagstaff to start the 2013-14 season with a two-game series at Jay Lively Activity Center against the D2 NAU Icejacks.

The Wildcats scored five goals in each of the two games, and left with a 2-0 record.  Joey Putrelo from the Daily Wildcat was there and gives us this recap of how the weekend went for Arizona.

On Friday, sophomore goalie Dylan Hojnacki got the call, and answered by only allowing one goal on 35 shots faced.  Arizona won the game 5-1 behind two goals from captain Ansel Ivens-Anderson as well as scores from sophomore Brennen Parker, freshman Alex O'Dea and freshman Robbie Wilkinson.

The most impressive thing from the Friday night game was the Arizona penalty kill.  The Icejacks went 0-for-13 on the power play.

"While we are not pleased with the amount of penalties we took, we obviously we need to address our discipline," said head coach Sean Hogan.  "It was good to get a win in the opener."

Saturday night, the Wildcats scored five goals again, but senior goaltender Steve Sisler allowed three pucks to get by him on just 22 shots.  Sisler told the Daily Wildcat: "Definitely not one of my best games; I had a few mental errors out there.  That's going to happen in your first game of the season. You just have to focus and get it out of your system and move on to the next games."

Arizona goal scorers on Saturday included Alex O'Dea, senior Jeff Wadhams, freshman Wil Pointon, junior Shane Gleason and senior Andrew Murmes.

So advantage to Hojnacki in net so far for the Wildcats.  It'll be important to find a consistent goaltender early in the season as the schedule only gets more difficult from here.  Arizona travels to Arizona State this weekend to take on the No. 2 Sun Devils in Tempe.  Apparently freshman goalie Garrett Patrick could be an option this weekend as well.

Around the WCHL

Here are some results from the rest of the WCHL for this week:

No. 2 ASU 10, Weber State (D2) 0

No. 5 Oklahoma splits two game series with No. 4 Adrian

No. 14 Central Oklahoma splits two game series with No. 3 Lindenwood

Colorado State splits two game series with D2 Denver University

Colorado played Colorado Thunderbirds U18 (so doesn't count)

No ranked teams lost to unranked teams in the ACHA this week