The No. 4 seed Ohio State Buckeyes kept their season alive Saturday in an elimination game by defeating the No. 5 seed Ferris State Bulldogs 3-1 as the Buckeyes were bolstered by goals from Ryan Dzingel, Max McCormick and Nick Oddo.<\/p>\n
\tOhio State now forces a deciding third game of the CCHA quarterfinals. The winner of tomorrow evening’s contest will advance to the semifinal round of the CCHA playoffs to face either Notre Dame or Michigan.<\/p>\n
\t“We came out in the first period and played well,” Ohio State coach Mark Osiecki said. “We played more of our style. Last night, I thought we were a little tentative with the puck bounces not going our way.”<\/p>\n
\tThe Buckeyes shot early and often as they outshot Ferris State 12-5 in the first period and 38-28 for the contest. Ferris State goalie C.J. Motte gave his squad a chance in the game by making 35 saves. <\/p>\n
\t“Ohio State played a good hockey game,” said Ferris State coach Bob Daniels. “I don’t think we were poor by any stretch of the imagination.”<\/p>\n
\tFor the second straight contest, Ferris State got on the board first just 3:31 into the game. Travis Ouellette scored his 11th of the season after he directed a shot from the point from Justin Buzzeo while Ohio State forward Darik Angeli was serving a holding penalty. <\/p>\n
\tOhio State knotted the game at one 13:22 into the first as Curtis Gedig quarterbacked a nice pass through the neutral zone to a streaking Dzingel, who found himself with a breakaway and converted by going top shelf on Motte.<\/p>\n
\t“It was an individual play by Gedig,” Osiecki said. “He made a great read, a great pass and [Dzingel] was able to pick it up in stride. I think he caught it on his backhand and then a great shot by him. A lot of times, he doesn’t like to shoot, but we tell him when he shoots, good things happen.”<\/p>\n
\tOhio State took a 2-1 lead 14:30 into the second as McCormick took advantage of a Ferris State defensive-zone turnover and snuck a shot past Motte. <\/p>\n
Unlike last evening, Ohio State held onto its 2-1 second-period lead.<\/p>\n
\t“I don’t think there was any panic or anything like that,” Daniels said. “When you get a one-goal lead early, it is nice, but there is a long ways to go. Even when we were down a goal, it is in my mind, no different than last night.”<\/p>\n
\tAfter a physical third period, Oddo put the game out of reach by scoring into the Bulldogs’ vacated net with 44 seconds remaining in the contest.<\/p>\n
\tIn four contests this season, the Bulldogs and Buckeyes have a split 2-2 record and have an even goal differential. With Sunday marking three straight evenings of hockey for the two clubs, stamina and conditioning could become an important factor. <\/p>\n
\t“You have to focus after the game,” McCormick said. “Guys were stretching, cold tubbing and biking, getting that lactic acid out and getting your legs fresh for tomorrow. That is a big part of it for the next day.”<\/p>\n
\t“I think you’ll see a lot of energy in the first period [Sunday] from both teams,” Daniels said. “And then I think it is going to settle into a tight checking kind of game. Both teams are pretty well conditioned and play hard. I do think tomorrow, it will be harder to generate offense the longer the game goes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The No. 4 seed Ohio State Buckeyes kept their season alive Saturday in an elimination game by defeating the No. 5 seed Ferris State Bulldogs 3-1 as the Buckeyes were bolstered by goals from Ryan Dzingel, Max McCormick and Nick Oddo. Ohio State now forces a deciding third game of the CCHA quarterfinals. The winner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[340],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17321"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17364,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions\/17364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17321"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}