It wasn't long ago that ASU hockey was just another club sport. Competing in the relatively unknown American Collegiate Hockey Association, the Sun Devils failed to yield a strong team and thus, suffered the curse of irrelevance in the ASU athletic community.
That changed in 2010, when Greg Powers was hired as head coach of the team.
Powers, who played goalie on the club squad when he was a student at ASU, brought a new approach to the team and subsequently changed its culture. Rather than solely relying on players from the Southwest, Powers made recruiting trips to Canada, and pulled players down to Tempe from north of the border.