Ohio State men’s hockey sweeps UMass, wins 3-0

After Friday night’s game, I was disappointed Ohio State didn’t dominate an inferior team. Tonight, they made me have a nice serving of crow for dinner as they dominated the UMass Minutemen 3-0 in Amherst, Mass., to complete the weekend sweep.

After being out attempted on Friday, the Buckeyes, despite leading from the 11:12 mark of the first on, out attempted UMass 50-42 and outshot them 32-23 for the shot pummeldrome.

Tanner Laczynski would turn out to be the main engine humming for the Buckeyes on this Saturday night, as he registered primary assists on all three of the OSU goals. Kevin Miller scored the first, Janik Moser the second and Matthew Weis the third.

Secondary assists on the three goals went to Dakota Joshua, Wyatt Ege and Miller, respectively. Moser’s goal was his first collegiate score and Ege’s assist was his first point in the Scarlet and Gray.

Most encouragingly, aside from the shot attempt numbers, was Sean Romeo registering his first shutout as a Buckeye. He stopped all 23 shots that were fired his way and allowed only a single goal on 48 shots total on the weekend. That goes for a .979 save percentage, which if he somehow kept that up for a whole season, would make him the best goalie in the world. So don’t count on this percentage every weekend—but it was still nice to see.

More distressingly for Ohio State, UMass took seven penalties in the content and Ohio State couldn’t capitalize and register a single powerplay goal. OSU ended 0/6 on the power play and couldn’t find a way to get one past UMass freshman goalie Matt Murray (maybe he switched places with the Penguins’ Matt Murray .896 save percentage coming into tonight for Pittsburgh).

However, OSU did kill off all three of the powerplay opportunities UMass had on the evening.

There isn’t really that much to say or explain about this one. Ohio State is the better, more talented team, and did something they haven’t done enough of this young season: controlled play against an inferior team.

Kudos to Ohio State for not taking the pressure off either, which I’m sure was helped by UMass not being able to stay out of the penalty box. OSU has had a nasty habit of taking their foot off the gas when they’re ahead or just not pressuring enough in general, but that wasn’t the case tonight, if shot totals are any indication of possession.

Quality goaltending, an offense generating shots and a defense scoring a goal is generally a recipe for success. Ohio State combined those to defeat a team they should beat and completed the weekend road sweep.

The 3-1-2 Buckeyes will be back at it next weekend as they host Robert Morris in Columbus on Friday and travel to Pittsburgh to face them again on the road on Saturday as the last tuneup before facing new conference rival Notre Dame in the first weekend of November.