OXFORD, Ohio — Day 658 was the charm.
Max Helgeson and Ryan Smith scored two goals apiece as Miami won its first conference game in nearly 22 months, 5-2 over Arizona State at Cady Arena on Saturday.
The RedHawks had not beaten an NCHC foe since Jan. 13, 2024 when they topped Western Michigan in this building.
Miami (7-1) is off next weekend and heads to the aforementioned WMU for a two-game series on Nov. 14-15.
RECAP: Like Friday, Miami scored in the third minute of play. Helgeson won a 1-on-2 boards battle, carried the puck unabated toward the net and roofed a wrist shot 2:02 into the game.
Also similarly to a night earlier, Arizona State (3-5) scored the next two.
The Sun Devils tied it when former Miamian Johnny Waldron threaded a pass from the left side of the net to Cruz Lucius, who buried a wrister from the inside edge of the right faceoff circle with 9:10 left in the opening frame.
Then ASU took a 2-1 lead with 10:41 remaining in the second period on a goal by Benjamin Kevan, who cashed in a backdoor pass on the left side of the cage off a one-time feed by Waldron.
That’s where the scoring similarities ended, as Miami ran off three straight goals in the final nine minutes of that stanza.
Just 2:06 after the Kevan goal, David Deputy ladled a pass through the top of the crease to Helgeson, who buried the one-timer on the short side.
With 5:03 left in the period, Justin Stupka dropped a pass to Ethan Hay on a 3-on-2 shorthanded rush, and Hay buried it, top shelf, stick side, with two seconds remaining on the Miami power play for his first collegiate goal.
Then 50 seconds later, Casper Nassen backhanded a pass from the corner to Smith, who snuck a one-timer through traffic and goalie Connor Hasley while falling down to make it 4-2.
Smith sealed it when he played give-and-go with Blake Mesenburg behind the red line, with Mesenburg sliding a blind backhand pass to Smith from along the boards, and Smith firing it into the open net with 1:12 remaining.
STATS: Smith finished with two goals and already has six on the season, all in the last four games, with five coming in the two Saturday contests. The sophomore transfer notched just two goals and three assists with Quinnipiac last season.
Helgeson also scored twice, as he and Smith remain tied for the team lead with six apiece.
Kocha Delic was credited with two assists, but Nassen should’ve been credited with it. Regardless, Delic extended his points streak to eight games, the longest to open a season since Carter Camper in 2010, when he went 9-15-24 in the RedHawks’ first nine games.
Hay scored his first career goal shorthanded, and he also picked up an assist for his first collegiate multi-point game.
Grimes earned an assist as he extended his points streak to six games, as did Stupka, who has five points in five games.
Mesenburg’s helper was his first point of the season, and Deputy’s was the first of his career.
Deputy missed five games with a UBI, but he tied Helgeson for the team lead in shots on goal with seven.
(When the powers-that-be adjust the assists, Nassen will be credited with his fifth point and fourth assist for his outstanding pass to Smith).
Michael Quinn earned the lone point on the defense corps, his fourth point of 2025-26.
— One last time, then we bury the story forever: Miami snapped a 41-game league winless streak, having gone 0-39-2 since beating Western Michigan on Jan. 13, 2024 for its last conference win. Which was 658 days from Saturday.
— The RedHawks have scored in the first period all eight games this season. Miami found the net just 16 times in the opening frame all of 2024-25.
— Hay’s shorty was Miami’s first in 34 games. The last SHG the RedHawks scored was in a 4-1 win over Lindenwood on Oct. 26, 2024.
ANALYSIS: Of course coach Anthony Noreen said all of the right things regarding Miami’s league winless streak.
It’s a brand-new team that doesn’t have memories of those agonizing losses. This team has naivety. Ignorance is bliss. All of that PC coach stuff.
But there’s no way that skid wasn’t at least somewhere in the back of this team’s collective mind.
Long-time fans know, and when the third period began and Miami led by two goals, anxiety was a natural impulse.
In a way that’s the best part of this game. Not only did the RedHawks not break or even bend, they played some of their best hockey in the final 20 minutes and ultimately extended the lead on an empty netter.
Miami held a high-powered Arizona State team to five shots on goal in the last frame.
The RedHawks needed to play their best game of the year to win, and they played their best game of the year and seem to be getting better every week.
— A key moment of the game was at the 11:37 mark of the first period, when Miami freshman stud Ilia Morozov was assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for cross-checking.
Arizona State had just tied the score a minute earlier, and the RedHawks — who entered the game with a paltry 71.4 PK clip — killed off the major, but they were still without one of their top forwards for the duration.
Killing off two-minute minors has been an issue for MU, but apparently five-minute majors are no problem.
Enter David Deputy, who was coming back from a UBI this weekend and played on the fourth line Friday and the opening minutes in this game. Deputy shifted to the top line with Delic and Matteo Giampa, and he showed glimpses of why he was so highly-touted this off-season.
Showing off explosive speed and skill offensively and defensively, Deputy picked up his first career assist, and he tied Helgeson for the team lead with seven shots on goal.
The initial call on Morozov was a disqualification penalty, which carries a mandatory one-game suspension, but it was changed to a game misconduct during the game.
And after watching the replay, that’s the right call. It was a dangerous play, two skaters going into the corner and Morozov pushing a player in the upper back, head-first into the boards. Malicious? No. Careless. Yes.
Noreen said after the game that Morozov was upset with himself over the penalty, and — having a reputation for have an insane hockey work ethic — was shooting pucks during his timeout.
— Miami was assessed a bench minor, supposedly for chirping from Noreen, and the RedHawks responded with a shorthanded goal by Hay with two seconds left on the penalty.
Unofficially it was the first penalty on the head coach since Enrico Blasi in 2019.
The Doug Grimes was called for the same thing. MU killed the penalty.
Noreen typically is, shall we say, interactive with the officials, but this weekend he rode them to excess.
Granted the officiating was a little inconsistent, but hopefully this weekend was an aberration for Noreen, because the words “worse than Rico” floated around the concourse on multiple occasions Saturday.
Good chance Grimes doesn’t get whistled either had there not been a pattern in this series.
— Continue to be amazed with Smith and Grimes not being to earn significant roles with Quinnipiac and Boston U., respectively.
Smith had two goals and three assists in 33 games last season. He has scored six times and added two helpers already with Miami.
And Grimes had one point with the Terriers in 2024-25. He’s already 3-5-8 as a RedHawk.
— Kudos to the entire defense corps for arguably its best game of the season. They helped hold a talented ASU team to 23 shots on goal, and…
— Big credit to goalie Matteo Drobac for stopping 21 of 23 shots, and he had almost no chance on the two Sun Devils goals. And once again he shut down a breakaway. Drobac, who has logged every minute in Miami’s net this season, has been outstanding on odd-man rushes, including breakaways, and didn’t allow a bad goal all series. He’s now 7-1 with a solid 2.61 goals-against average and a .911 save percentage.
— A coincidence the Miami DJ played a club version of the Jerry Lee Lewis classic “Hey! Baby” when Hay took a faceoff? Well played.
— An entire row of scouts left after Morozov was ejected. That was 11 minutes into the game.
LINEUP CHANGES: None. Bradley Walker and Kyle Aucoin remain out with injuries.
STANDINGS: One weekend into NCHC play, Miami is tied for third with three points, along with St. Cloud State, Western Michigan, and of course Arizona State, all of whom split.
Omaha swept Colorado College and is first place. North Dakota split but won one game in overtime, so the Fighting Hawks are in second with four points.
FINAL THOUGHTS: It’s extremely early in the season, of course, but the transformation of this program from last season, from other recent seasons, to Version Fall 2025 could not be more diametric.
We grew accustomed to pressers where coaches would say the team had one or two good periods, and then the inevitable question about what needs to be done to get better, as if the coach was treating a disease.
The difference is this team has responded, meeting Noreen’s public challenges.
One month into this season, there has barely been a Miami shift that hasn’t been maximum effort. If Mesenburg can play like every shift is overtime in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final, imagine if guys that are NHL draft picks, or studs with their respective high-level juniors teams do that? Well, now they are.
“This is the expectation,” Noreen recently said when asked about his team’s effort after a win.
No sane person would expect this team to maintain an .875 win percentage, but this Miami team that was picked to finish last in the NCHC could surprise some people this season, and just a month into this season, the future of this program suddenly looks much brighter.
————
VFG is headed to Belfast to cover Miami in the Friendship Four this November. We’re a completely independent website, so we bring you RedHawks hockey coverage without a dime of corporate compensation. If you like our work and have the means, please consider helping us continue to provide the best RedHawks coverage and photos by contributing via Venmo here:
View From the Glass 