UCLA slaps down USC, Berkeley en route to playoff berth at Cal

Tuesday, January 19, 1999

UCLA slaps down USC, Berkeley en route to playoff berth at
Cal

HOCKEY: No. 1 seeded Bruin team, in contention for Pac-8 title,
look to dominate Golden Bears in upcoming tournament rematch

By Kimberly Edds

Daily Bruin Contributor

They might have looked like Disney’s version of the Mighty Ducks
in their mismatched jerseys, but the UCLA ice hockey team played a
whole lot better against USC and Cal Berkely than those peewee
players did in the movie.

UCLA beat Southern Cal – again – 5-2 on Friday night. That makes
five Bruin victories over Trojan ice hockey this year alone.

The Bruins also sent Cal packing, handing them two losses in a
row, 8-2 on Saturday and 9-1 on Sunday.

It didn’t even matter that a small communication problem with
Cal caused UCLA to have to scramble for basically any white jersey
it could find with makeshift numbers, so that the referees could
tell the two teams apart. It wasn’t hard. UCLA was the team scoring
all the goals.

Center Eric Eisner dominated the Bears Sunday night, scoring
three goals with three assists for a total of six points. Reinhart
Kramreither and Ben Theule joined Eisner at the line in putting Cal
away in game two of the series. Theule rejoined the team after a
two-game suspension after an altercation with an Oregon player
earlier in the season.

The Bruins are 18-1-0 overall and 14-1-0 in the Pac-8. UCLA will
face fourth-seeded Cal in the first round of the Pac-8 play-offs in
mid-February. The Bears will be hosting the play-offs.

"We look forward to having the same kind of domination over Cal
in the playoffs that we had this weekend," UCLA captain Mike Siegel
said.

Maybe the whole Mighty Duck thing isn’t that far off after all,
with ex-Los Angeles King Daryl Evans playing Emilio Estevez. Evans
has turned UCLA’s struggling ice hockey team into the number one
seed in the Pac-8.

And a lot of the team’s success has to do with Evans’ coaching
style.

"He’s disciplined, but he knows how to relate to the players at
the same time, because he was a player," wing Ben Theule said.

Whatever works, works. Right now, what Daryl Evans is doing,
works.

Last year Siegel stood behind his team and his coach by
predicting, "We’re going to start off great and just improve from
there. We are probably going to be the best team in the
league."

Guess what? That prediction came true.

Next up for the Bruins is Long Beach State on Friday and two
games at Stanford over the weekend. Stanford handed UCLA its only
loss this season.

For more information about UCLA ice hockey, go to
www.studentgroups.ucla.edu/icehockey.

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