Just a few notes to add to Patrick's post.  This is definitely a young team.  I
don't think I have ever seen so many freshman on the ice as Ohio State had out
there tonight.  The breakdown:
Seniors--4
Juniors--4
Sophomores--2
Freshmen--10
 
The defense consisted of 1 junior, 1 sophomore, and 4 freshmen.  Surprisingly
however, the defense played very well except for that four-goal outburst by
Toronto at the end of the second period.  Last year, the Buckeyes gave up about
180 goals in 32 CCHA contests.  The defense was always out of position and
frequently made dumb, fundamental mistakes.  I was both pleased and surprised
to see very little of that tonight.  They were in position and played a very
sound game.
 
Some of the freshman forwards for OSU have a good deal of both size and
quickness, and while they did seem to run out of gas a bit in the second
period, played tough in the third and dominated the OT, making the Toronto
goalie make sevral good saves before one of the freshmen (I don't have my
program in front of me) put in the GWG in the OT.
 
Goaltending was solid.  Freshman Tom Askey started and played the first 30
minutes.  He's a stand-up goalie who checks in around 185lbs and stands at
6'2".  He looked awkward out there very often, but every time he needed to stop
the puck, he did (although he often couldn't find the puck after he stopped
it...he seemed a bit nervous in there for a while).  He does need to learn how
to handle the puck better outside of the crease as he frequently misplayed it
when he came out to leave off a dump-in or to play it around the boards.
 
Slazyk seemed shaky in the second period and was responsible for the 4 goals
given up at the end of the 2nd.  Some of it was the fault of a major
concentration lapse by the whole team as they showed that a large group of
freshmen can be easily rattled in their first varsity game.  However, Slazyk
also let in a couple soft goals too.  (Slazyk is a senior, BTW.)
 
It is hard to know how to summarize this one.  It will be clearer exactly how
competitive this group will be when league play starts and we play teams that
are known quantities.  BGSU beat Toronto 8-1 last night, but I am not sure if
that means anything about this game and how close it was.  Really, the Buckeyes
dominated for all but 6 minutes of the game.  I was pleased with the way we
looked on the whole though.  The defense looked solid and the offense seemed to
work fairly well, and we appeared to have a decent amount of team speed. They
did look disorganized in the last half of the second,
but with 10 freshmen on the ice at various times, you expect a few
concentration lapses to occur.  At least it was only half a period.  Last year,
the Buckeyes would nap for 20 or 30 minutes.
 
Hopefully, these young players will learn to work as a very cohesive unit over
their time at OSU, but of course, such development takes good coaching....Welsh
may not be the man for the job.
 
Miscellaneous comments: The 2/1 ref system seemed to work quite well tonight as
one ref seemed to pull double duty as a linesman throughout the game.  It did
not seem to result in more penalties or a slower game, and I actually liked it
a lot better than I thought I would.  However, why is it that every time I see
a Canadian team, there is always much more fighting jostling going on?  It is
somewhat rare to see a fight in a conference game, but I cannot remember a time
while I was at Cornell seeing a Canadian team play my team and there not being
at least one fight.  Are they allowed more freedom to fight in the Canadian
college leagues?  In a Cornell-Toronto exhibition at Lynah a few years ago, the
Toronto goalie took off his glove and threw it at the ref.  (He was ejected.)
 
I got the chance to speak with the man who coached the Bucks prior to Jerry
Welsh's tenure.  I asked him if OSU would ever build a better facility than the
Ice Rink.  He said, "Not in my lifetime."  I asked him about the recruiting
disadvantage the poor facility put us in and whether he thought it was a factor
in OSU's perennial status as a cellar-dweller.  His response made no sense to
me.
 
He said that he didn't think it was a factor because players who come here
never mention the building as a factor in their decision.  (Why ask players who
come here...if they cared about facilities, then they wouldn't have
come...obviously, players who come here aren't as interested in a modern
facility and thus you wouldn't expect them to name it as a reason in their
decision to attend a school--this guy is definitely not a scientist)  I pressed
the issue saying that surely, when a top recruit sees the facilities and the
crowds at Michigan St. or Michigan, or BGSU, it will be tough to lure him to
Columbus.  The coach responded that yes, they do lose players to such programs,
but they have gotten a few away from them too--guys who aren't sure if they can
play for those programs feel like they can come here and have a better shot at
playing time.  Correct me if I heard this wrong, but I interpret this as saying
we have accepted that OSU is and always will be a collection of players who
aren't good enough to play for the other schools that are more competitive and
we have no interest in upgrading the program so we can truly compete for the
Denny Felsners of the world.
 
He also said something about Canadians playing in rinks much worse than OSU's,
so they really don't take the rink into account because they are all better
than what they are used to.  I don't buy this at all.  Trent Andison (Cornell
'91--and a Canadian) was recruited by both Cornell and OSU.  He was quoted in
the program once as saying "All it took was for me to attend one game there and
one game at Lynah for me to make my decision."
 
It is no wonder then, with all this kind of thinking running around this
school, that OSU has a second-rate Div I program and will probably never
improve much without some kind of lucky recruiting.
 
--
Dave [log in to unmask]
Cornell '91 OSU Med '95
Far above Cayuga's waters.....