Twenty-four seconds was all it took for the Arizona Icecats (7-8) to take control of their two-game series against the Weber State Wildcats (7-10) and never look back.
After senior defenseman Austin Capobianco netted a fluttering goal 24 seconds into the first period of Friday night’s contest, the Icecats went on to score eight first-period goals and send a depleted Weber State team packing early.
“”I haven’t seen that in a long time, especially in college,”” said freshman Brian Slugocki of the first-period barrage. “”But I mean (Weber State) was down 10 players and we got a couple lucky bounces here and there, but it’s a good feeling to score eight goals in a period.””
Weber State was clearly undermanned — 10 players were out due to injury — and couldn’t muster up the defense or the goaltending to stop the red-hot Icecats. Capobianco scored the first two goals for the Icecats, and Slugocki also netted two scores in the period.
The Icecats kept scoring, and Weber State kept struggling. Slugocki posted his second four-goal game of the season, and the Icecats cruised to a 12-1 victory.
“”The kid can shoot,”” Capobianco said of Slugocki, who ended the weekend with six goals and three assists. “”He just has a knack for the net, he just knows how to score. It’s a gift and he’s taking advantage of it.””
After such a dominating performance in game one, a game-two letdown was bound to happen.
“”It was a sloppy 60 minutes,”” head coach Leo Golembiewski said after game two. “”There was no determination at all, there was no getting it going, it just never got going.””
The team didn’t come out with the same intensity as it did in game one, but considering the circumstances, the Icecats didn’t need to be perfect to capture a win.
Junior co-captain Jordan Schupan, who had four assists in game one, scored two first-period goals, putting Icecats up 2-1 going into the second period.
Slugocki and fellow freshman Andrew Treptow each scored in the first two minutes of the second period, but Weber State showed some fight, battling back with two goals of its own to head into the third period only down one.
Slugocki came back with another goal 1:44 into the third period, leading the Icecats to a 7-4 victory.
The Icecats outscored the Wildcats 19-5 during the two-game series, but a sub-500 team with only 11 active skaters is a far cry from the team they will be facing next weekend in the 16-4 Arizona State Sun Devils.
“”We can’t look at this as a mandate, we can’t look at this as, ‘We’ve turned the corner,'”” Golembiewski said. “”It’s great that we’ve won four straight, but the season’s not even halfway over yet.””
The Icecats have now won five straight games, but cannot put too much stock in this sweep. It’s time to start gearing up for an extremely talented ASU team.
“”It’s going to be a whole new level of play next weekend,”” Schupan said. “”We can’t look at this weekend and compare it to next weekend at all. The intensity, it’s going to be nuts. This place is going to be wild.””
