The UC Davis Ice Hockey Aggies extended their winning streak to 13 over the weekend. They defeated UC San Diego (7-3) on Saturday by a score of 6-3. Freshman Gordon Dickson had five points.
The Millbrae native leads the nation in points with 84, averaging 6.5 points per game through 13 games. To put the numbers in perspective, the nation’s player with the second-most points is Derek Grove of University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, who has 64 points in 24 games. Grove’s average comes out to 2.7 points per game.
“Obviously it’s been a great season so far with the 13-0 record,” Dickson said. “All the guys try to get along with each other well.”
Gordon described what it meant to have so much success and attributes a lot of his success to his teammates.
“I don’t score most of the goals. I usually pass and they get me scores,” he said. “I think there’s a lot more that goes into it than just an individual player. For all my goals, there’s definitely four other guys on the ice that have an impact on it. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do anything.”
After defeating their last four opponents by an average of 8.25 goals, the Aggies struggled on offense against UCSD.
“We weren’t clicking 100 percent like we normally do, but everyone was skating really hard. It’s important that even if you show up at the rink and you’re not playing your best and find a way to work hard and win the game anyway,” said coach Spenser Wagner.
“We were getting bad bounces, we weren’t passing the puck cleanly like we normally do. It was 4-2 for a long time so we had to keep working hard the whole game,” he said.
The Aggies have a challenging task ahead of them going against Santa Rosa Junior College. After coming out on top in both the contests earlier this season, the Aggies will face them again on Saturday. The previous scores were 8-7 and 12-4, respectively.
SRJC added five new players over the winter break, but Wagner is familiar with the acquisitions and also knows how to prepare for the game.
“I know three of them personally. They’re good players,” he said. “Specifically, I want to focus on our power play because they tend to take a lot of penalties.”
The Aggies should be well rested for SRJC after coming off five days of rest, and are continuously maintaining their focus.
“Once we finish our game over the weekend, we start focusing on whatever we’re doing this upcoming weekend. Now we’re thinking about Santa Rosa and Santa Clara, and UCSD is history,” Wagner said. “We’re not worried about the past. We’re more worried about the upcoming weekend now.”
The upcoming game will have extra visitors in the stands as the UC Davis Band-uh! will attend the game for the first time this year. The team is excited not only because of the big game, but also because of the extra support.
“Everyone says that [having] the band at the games are the best,” Dickson said.
Friday’s game will be played at Vacaville Ice Sports. Following that game, the Aggies will face Santa Clara University for the latter half of a back-to-back on Jan. 26 as the visitors. The Aggies have dominated the season series thus far, winning all four matchups against the Broncos.
LUKE BAE can be reached at sports@theaggie.org.
