TEMPE, Ariz. - On November 14, 2014, the desert climate of Tempe, Arizona became a cooler place when Arizona State University announced to the college hockey world that their national championship ACHA club program would join the NCAA ranks. After spending the ensuing nine seasons making history, the Sun Devils will add another notch to their ledger this weekend. ASU’s Friday night faceoff against Colorado College marks the program's first conference game as a National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) member.
 
While the game in Colorado Springs is nominally the first of 24 league tilts, it culminates a meteoric rise for head coach Greg Powers’ program since climbing from the American Club Hockey Association (ACHA) ranks a decade ago. After nine seasons as an independent program having to fill out its entire schedule on its own, playing in the NCHC brings stability to ASU hockey for the first time in its NCAA history.
 
“It was a surreal moment,” Powers said. “People at the club level ask what the blueprint was to get this done and there wasn’t a blueprint. We focused on becoming a dominant ACHA program, which we did. We did it to a level that the right people noticed, and good things happened. I’m truly fortunate to have had an athletic director that saw the value in keeping me on and making the charge to Division I hockey.”
 
Trial and Error
 
Joining a conference was always Arizona State’s goal after the NCAA promotion. It made overtures to the NCHC as early as 2016, but was unsuccessful as the league was not looking at expansion when it had just completed its third season. Despite not landing in a conference yet, Powers and Arizona State took the result in stride and used it as a learning experience to gauge what the program needed to do to gain a conference home.

 

“You have to learn by failure a lot of the time,” Powers said. “The best thing to happen to us and our program was not getting into the NCHC at the time. They were still brand new and getting their house in order, we didn’t even have a house to get in order. The best thing we could do was cut our teeth as an independent and learn what it took to be successful and compete at a high level.
 
“To join a league of this stature, you must create some sort of reciprocal value, and at that time we didn’t. Now we do. It’s a great trip for every team to come to Mullett Arena, we have an awesome fanbase and we’re near major airports. We’ve also been competitive with NCHC teams in the last few years and we expect to be competitive. Now the time is right, we were ready and the league was ready as well at the time this happened.”
 
Growing pains come with the territory of transitioning from the club level to varsity-caliber competition, and Arizona State certainly faced them. The Sun Devils won eight games while playing a hybrid schedule featuring club teams, Canadian schools and NCAA programs from different divisions in their inaugural 2015-16 season.
 
The season was not without highlights, however, as it showcased its NCAA mettle on an opening weekend trip to Alaska, when it dropped a tight overtime tilt at Alaska Anchorage in their first-ever game against an NCAA opponent before toppling Alaska Fairbanks, 2-1, the next night for its first-ever NCAA victory.
 
“That first weekend is always going to be my most memorable,” Powers said. “We had 16 kids who were playing club hockey a year ago and we took Anchorage to overtime on the first night and then won at Fairbanks the next night. That weekend was pure adrenaline for us that we belonged at this level, and they got it done.”
 
Recruiting talent is the hardest (and most crucial) part of winning in college sports. With ASU hockey gradually incorporating its 18 allotted scholarships over the first few years, Powers and his staff went to work to find players with the skill to skate against Division I opponents and the vision to see the potential for Sun Devils hockey.
 
“We had a three-year ramp up to 18 scholarships,” Powers said. “Recruiting for the NCAA is a much different animal. You have to hire people who are better at what they do than what you do, and you have to let them do their job. I think that’s what I’m proud of as we built our program is that I surrounded myself every step of the way with really good people.
 
“We had to find kids who wanted to come here and make our mantra (‘be the tradition’) become a reality. Every program in the NCHC has unbelievable tradition. Here, we are looking for a different kid to set the standard and be a trailblazer and make a name for both themselves and the program. Our early players like Johnny (Walker) and Joey (Daccord) weren’t considered blue chippers at the time. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them.”
 

Powers didn’t have to look far to find a talented player with enthusiasm for what he was building in Tempe. A Phoenix native, Walker kept an open line of communication with Powers and already considered Arizona State his destination school.
 
“There were talks about them going Division I for a while,” Walker said. “When it finally happened, everything shifted for me. I knew I wanted to come to Arizona State right away. I bugged Coach Powers quite a bit and told him not to forget me. I was a little underdeveloped at that point and it sparked a fire in me to be able to come home and play hockey here.”
 
A Breakthrough in the Desert
 
Walker debuted with a bang, tying for the NCAA freshman lead with 17 goals during the 2017-18 season.
 
While the Sun Devils only recorded eight victories again that year, their first facing exclusively NCAA opponents, they were highly competitive in the majority of their contests. Of ASU’s 34 games that year, 23 were decided by two goals or fewer.
 
Arizona State’s breakout season came during Walker’s sophomore year in 2018-19. Walker provided even more scoring prowess by netting 23 goals (tied for most in the country). His performance, along with an All-American showing in goal by Joey Daccord (2.35 goals-against average, .926 save percentage), anchored the Sun Devils to 21 victories and their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
 
“The team before set the foundation for our run to the NCAA Tournament,” Walker said. “Our effort never changed, but we added a few pieces that helped us a lot to improve our results. We started to win some games early on and kept showing up and doing the right thing, which paid off with a tournament appearance.”
 
A Bump in the Road
 
After getting a taste of postseason play, the Sun Devils continued their momentum in 2019-20. Walker chipped in another 20 goals and 38 points and ASU finished the regular season with a 22-11-3 record and were comfortably above the PairWise Rankings cut line to make their second-straight NCAA Tournament. Unfortunately, that tournament never happened due to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling the NCAA (and NCHC) postseason.
 
“We had a ton of momentum as a program,” Powers said. “Everyone has their COVID stories, and they are all valid, but COVID really set us back. We had a ton of momentum and felt very good about where our team was and how we were playing. We didn’t have as long of a layoff between games as the year before. It hurt us and our best player was going to be back the next year, but then we didn’t even know if we would have a season. Then we ended up playing an all-road season in the Big Ten. I’m glad we did it, but with a really young program we had to learn how to win all over again.”
 
While the Sun Devils made a compelling case for joining a conference competitively, there was work to do from a facility standpoint. For the first seven seasons of its NCAA tenure, ASU called Oceanside Arena home. A holdover from its club hockey days, the rink was a few miles away from campus and could only seat 900 fans.
 
In a conference like the NCHC that features 10,000+ seat jewels such as Ralph Engelstad Arena, ASU needed an upgrade. While the program was improving its results on the ice, the administration worked tirelessly to make a new home a reality for the Sun Devils. Those efforts bore fruit as Arizona State cut the ribbon on the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena prior to the 2022-23 campaign, opening the door for even bigger things to come for the program.
 

 
“Mullett Arena doesn’t happen without Greg Powers,” Arizona State Athletic Director Graham Rossini said. “He played with one of the Mullett family members as a club team and he was the key to that relationship and their support for the program. They rallied a lot of donors to make this rink a reality. It was a leap of faith that this was going to be successful, but the right people believed in it. They were key to us progressing beyond just another Division I program, but to a highly competitive one.

“After we opened the rink, we were fortunate to play many NCHC schools at home to give them a chance to see for themselves how committed we are to excelling on the ice. We were proud to showcase the investment we made in the sport. We wanted the league to see our progression and we know we are set up to compete.”
 
Home at Last
 
With yet another box checked off the list for building its program, Arizona State continued talking with the NCHC. That partnership officially came to fruition in July of 2023 when the parties announced that ASU was becoming the league’s ninth member for the 2024-25 season.
 
“There was a lot of excitement when the news came down,” senior defenseman and assistant captain Ty Murchison said. “We’re a team that prides ourselves on proving ourselves. I think we face a lot of doubts because we’re a hockey team out in the desert. The number one thing that came to mind was that we were ready to prove ourselves and we’re looking forward to doing that this year.”
 

In addition to stability and predictability in its schedule, Arizona State joining the NCHC is another competitive benefit. The Sun Devils won a school-record 24 games in their final season as an independent program last year, but missed the NCAA Tournament due to their strength of schedule rating. The NCHC has sent at least three teams to the NCAA Tournament every year since it began, and as many as six in one year (2015), and currently boasts five teams ranked in the top 20 nationally.
 
“We knew the PairWise was even more important as an independent team,” senior captain Ethan Szmagaj said. “We were always on our toes on trying to get a push going at the end of the year knowing how the strength of schedule could play out in an independent schedule. Finally being able to join the NCHC is an honor for us, and it gives us that hope at the end that we can improve our standing with a conference tournament at the end of the year to push us back into the NCAAs.
 
“We’re focused on keeping that momentum going and are excited to get conference play started. Our team is relentless, plays hard and is fast. I think that will serve us well in this league.”
 
Even though Friday will be Arizona State’s first conference game as an NCHC member, the Sun Devils are quite familiar with NCHC competition. Since the 2022-23 campaign, ASU has gone 6-6-2 against NCHC foes, including a 6-5 victory over eventual national champion Denver last season.
 
“Joining the NCHC is an honor, but it comes with a responsibility,” senior forward Lukas Sillinger said. “The NCHC is looked at as a top conference in the country. Everyone wants to face the best and that’s going to make them be the best they can be on and off the ice.”
 
On Friday night, Arizona State adds another historic moment to its storybook. With the journey the Sun Devils took to get here, the sky is clearly the limit as ASU opens the NCHC era.
 
“We worked really hard to get here,” Powers said. “I don’t think that anyone on the outside will ever know just how hard we had to work to get to this point today. It hasn’t been easy and now we’ve closed the first chapter of our history. We’re settled into a brand-new arena, we’re going to the best league in college hockey and it’s time to start chapter two. Chapter two for us is building to a point where we’re starting to compete for national championships. We call it our banner-hanging moment, we want to win conference and national championships. That’s the goal.”
 
The Sun Devils begin NCHC play Friday and Saturday night at Colorado College and both games can be seen on NCHC.tv. ASU then hosts its first-ever conference games at Mullett Arena on Nov. 15-16 against Omaha.