Maybe it was the rare Sunday afternoon start time. Maybe it was playing in a vacation destination. Whatever the reason, No. 18 Air Force came out flat and lost to a charged up Arizona State team, 5-2, at Glendale, Ariz.

Freshman Pierce Pluemer and junior Tyler Ledford scored the Falcons’ goals, but they chased the game from the outset.

“It was disappointing tonight as the effort was just not there,” assistant coach Joe Doyle said. “We were concerned with some areas even though we had won some games, but today we were exposed in those areas. We didn’t win many battles and give Arizona State credit, they played really hard. We have to bring it more consistently.”

Arizona State (1-3), which gained the first victory in program history over a ranked team, took a 2-0 lead on first-period goals by Dylan Hollman and Brett Gruber.

Pluemer got the Falcons (2-1-1) on the board at 3:37 of the second when he  punched in a rebound of Dan Bailey‘s shot. But the Sun Devils responded with two more goals in the period – first a rebound tally by Tyler Busch and a power-play strike by Robbie Baillargeon, a graduate student transfer from Boston University. The latter goal stopped Air Force’s unscathed streak of penalty kills at 16.

Ledford’s end-to-end rush, capped by the puck bouncing in off an ASU defenseman, got the Falcons back in it, but the Sun Devils ensured the outcome when Wade Murphy, a transfer from North Dakota, scored on the power play with 7:05 left.

Air Force outshot Arizona State, 26-23.

Here are few things we learned:

Not so special

For the first time this season, the penalty kill let the Falcons down. AFA gave up goals after two of their five penalties, and both times those goals extended a two-goal deficit to three, which is tough for any team to recover from. While the Falcons’ power play was credited with a goal, it came on Ledford’s rush that was aided by some puck luck. AFA is just 3 for 25 (12 percent) with a man advantage this season. Clearly that has to improve.

Defensive questions

The Falcons rested starting goaltender Shane Starrett, and while Billy Christopoulos wasn’t bad, he also had some sequences where his defense didn’t help him by clearing pucks out of harm’s way. Christopoulos made 18 saves. His counterpart, Joey Daccord, was excellent in making 24 saves. A larger problem was the Sun Devils gained speed coming into the zone and beat the Falcons defense to the outside several times, giving them a path to drive the net. When Christopoulos made the first save, the rebounds sat there at times. Meanwhile, ASU did a better job keeping Air Force to the outside.

Notes

Junior co-captain Dylan Abood missed his fourth consecutive game because of an upper body injury. … Christopoulos made his first start of the season after fellow sophomore Starrett started the Falcons’ first three games. … A.J. Reid sustained an injury just after the Sun Devils’ third goal but returned to the game later in the period. … Defenseman Kyle Mackey went down holding his left knee after getting hit by a slap shot on an ASU power play halfway through the second period. He needed assistance to leave the ice but returned in the third period. Forward Ben Kucera‘s goal-scoring streak ended at three games. … The Falcons open Atlantic Hockey play Friday night with a two-game series against Bentley at Cadet Arena.