Scoring three goals within its first five minutes, the San Jose State ice hockey team won a hard-fought game against Cal State Long Beach 5-4 after overtime and a shootout Friday.
For rankings purposes, the game will count as a tie for both teams.
The crowd of mostly Spartans fans heckled Long Beach State and the referees more and more as the game progressed.
After the 49ers earned several penalties for interference and charging during the first period, a member of the audience shouted at 49er defender Ryan Schlerf, “This guy’s an asshole, get him off the ice.”
The crowd yelled at and booed the referees when they called interference on Spartan junior forward Anthony Carter in the first period, with someone in the audience shouting, “You gotta call it both ways.”
Left wing and junior Evan Pace said at least a few of the calls from the referees unjustly kept the Spartans from taking advantage of power play and allowed the 49ers to tie the game in the third period.
Junior defender Ryan Ellis said the referees’ unfair calls frustrated him and referees have not treated the Spartans fairly ever since he started playing hockey at SJSU.
The Spartans often have a hometown disadvantage because of the officials, Ellis said.
“Especially when they should have favored us tonight, because the other team was playing a lot dirtier than we were,” he said.
Pace said he tries to focus on the game and not worry about the referees.
“We can’t control what they do,” he said.
Coach Vaughn Reuter said he wished the referees would have controlled the game more to keep players safe.
“I think at times the officials could have done more to protect the safety of all the players out there,” he said.
SJSU played some of the game’s strongest defense in the final minutes of the first period when Spartan junior goalie William Chan blocked three shots on goal from the 49ers.
As the clock reached zero at the end of the first period, some Spartans got into a scuffle on the ice with 49er forward Brad Schlerf.
Pace scored two of the Spartans’ three opening goals in the first period, setting the tone for the Spartans’ aggressive offense during the rest of the game.
Pace said the whole team played well during the first period and that it felt great to score a few of the Spartans’ opening goals.
“I don’t think I have scored two goals that quickly before, so that felt really good,” Pace said.
Long Beach State shifted the momentum of the game during the first minutes of the second period, with forward Ryan Osterkamp scoring.
In the last two minutes of the second period, Long Beach State scored two more goals, bringing the score to 4-3.
Allowing the 49ers to score in the first and last minutes of the second period gave them a crucial advantage, Ellis said.
“That’s something that we really felt bad about, but we came out in the third period with a fresh slate,” he said.
The fights and scuffles on the ice got much more bitter and frequent during the second period, with referees ejecting Carter from the game for stepping into a fight against the boards between the Spartans and 49ers.
Carter said he stepped in to protect a teammate after officials did nothing to stop a 49er from hitting him in the back of the head.
“I pulled a guy off of him and I guess they kicked me out for that,” Carter said.
The crowd reacted by booing the referees as Carter walked off of the ice and cheering when he walked past the stands after changing out of his hockey pads in the locker room.
Carter said he would not have done anything differently.
“I would do the same thing, because I am going to protect my teammates 100%,” Carter said.
Pace said Long Beach State’s high hits were the hardest part of playing them.
“They would just jump into a hit, which is supposed to be a penalty,” he said.
The 49ers used a similar hard-hitting strategy against the Spartans last year, defender Ryan Ellis said, and that their larger roster allows it to get players ejected without losing their advantage.
After another goal from Pace and a fight almost halfway through the second period, referees ejected 49er forward Schlerf and Spartan junior forward DJ Howell for head contact.
The crowd cheered as Schlerf walked off the ice.
Coach Reuter said the Spartans lost their composure at some points during the game, citing the ejection of Carter and Howell
as examples.
“We can’t have that kind of behavior,” Reuter said.
Later in the second period as the crowd booed after a collision, Schlerf shouted at the audience from the sidelines, “You guys are fucking classless,” only for the crowd to shout at him to go back to the locker room.
After the game, Pace said Long Beach State established their strategy of taking the Spartans off their game and getting them penalized in the second period and that SJSU needed to stay out of their head to win the next day.
The Spartans won again against the 49ers the next day too, 5-3.
