No. 15 Ohio State hockey beats Michigan, 5-1

If a school’s fans were to not give a damn about an entire state, say Michigan, going into Ann Arbor and winning both the football and hockey games would be a good way to show it.

And that’s exactly what Ohio State’s mens hockey team pulled on Saturday night, dominating the Wolverines to the tune of a 5-1 victory, following the football team’s 31-20 victory in The Game earlier in the afternoon. The football team fell down early and rallied back; the hockey team never trailed and showed clearly who was the superior squad.

Ohio State and Michigan were even in shot attempts and shots on goal, 62 and 35 apiece respectively, on the night and yet Ohio State never trailed. Michigan trailed from 8:38 into the second period on and could do no better than tying OSU in shots and attempts. That speaks well to either OSU’s superiority, UM’s mediocrity, or some combination of the two.

After Friday night’s third period shellacking, with Ohio State outshooting the Wolverines 18-8 in the third of the 3-2 victory, it wasn’t a fluke either. Despite the score effects and trailing for more than half the game, Michigan could do no better than even against a team in Ohio State known for receding into a shell once they get a lead.

The first half of this game wasn’t the laugher it ended up being, however. Christian Lampasso scored to give Ohio State the 1-0 lead 5:52 into the first, with Brendon Kearney and Matt Joyaux recording the assists. Michigan tied it at the 7:49 mark of the second, though, on Joseph Cecconi’s third of the year. But from thereon, it was all Buckeyes.

Tanner Laczynski scored his fifth of the year, and what would turn out to be the game winning goal, at 8:38 of the second, with an assist from Matthew Weis. Weis slithered a pass from behind the net through a multitude of UM defenders and even a Buckeye to find Laczynski in front to give OSU the lead back, just 49 seconds after Michigan had tied it up. OSU would lead the rest of the way.

Mason Jobst made it 3-1 in favor of the Buckeyes at 18:17 of the second, with his seventh of the year. Weis hit him on a cross ice pass with the man advantage and he fired it in from the faceoff dot to put OSU up two. Laczynski recorded the secondary helper.

Ohio State dominated the first two periods, putting up a 12-7 shot advantage in the first and upping it to 16-7 in the second alone. That’s 28-14 over two periods against the No. 17 team in the country, on the road. That’d be great against Rensselaer, much less Michigan.

In the third, it’d be more of the same. Weis finally got one of his own at 10:28, with Laczynski paying him back for that first goal with the lone assist. He won the faceoff and somehow got the puck right back from Laczynski and fired it home from the right faceoff dot, just like Jobst showed him could be done earlier.

Lampasso of all people doubled his goal total for the entire season with his second of the night later in the third, as he put one home on the powerplay with just .8 seconds left in the game. The Ohio State hockey twitter was apparently closed up for the night already and didn’t make a gif for this one, so I thought I’d put this one here instead.

I love me some Dwayne Haskins. That was a neat comeback he led.

Anyway, Sean Romeo somehow found a way to up his save percentage again, stopping 34/35 shots for a .971 on the night. Ridiculous. If he was as good as Christian Frey and Matt Tomkins were last year, the Bucks would’ve taken it. Instead, he’s been amazing and can keep the Buckeyes in any game playing like this.

The Buckeyes will look to keep the good times rolling next weekend when they host unranked Penn State. With the way OSU’s increased their volume shooting and the way Penn State will throw a puck on net from Nevada, it should be fun.