B1G NCAAs Recap
Looking at OSU and ND's respective runs in the tournament
Closing my coverage of the Big Ten hockey action with a look at how OSU and Notre Dame fared in the tournament games where they bowed out.
OSU 0 x 2 Denver
Regional Semi-Final: The Ohio State Buckeyes, one of the hottest teams in college hockey most of the year, came into the tournament not only rusty — almost a month since playing a game — but also pretty cold, dropping a number of winnable games to close the year. They also happened to run into a damn good Denver group with a hot goaltender. There was more complexity than just those factors, but I think that summarizes what happened in Ohio State’s 2-0 loss (with an empty-netter) to Denver to open the NCAA tournament.
Notes
Ohio State looked pretty solid. Not national championship contender-caliber, but this game was winnable, as most one-goal games are. Having ended the season the way they did, losing much of the in-season momentum, they still came out pretty well ready to play.
In the face-off dot and shooting totals they out-performed the Pioneers, but on the whole the offense wasn’t inspired. I thought a lot of the shots they took weren’t respectful of the goaltending and defensive performance the Pioneers were putting forward.
While the Buckeyes were big and experienced this year, they lacked for a thoroughbred pure scorer who would push this team over the edge. Obviously Mason Jobst carries a big part of this team offensively, but a big winger who can rifle pucks in regularly would have made this group elite. Gustaf Westlund seems like he could become that in a year or two. Had Badger recruit Cole Caufield not switched commitments a couple years ago, that would be solved this fall.
There was opportunity after opportunity for Ohio State to get back into the game, and they didn’t get it done. Credit to Denver for locking it down and earning a great win. First star for me was Filip Larsson.
Les Lancaster’s game was brilliant, the senior transfer from Mercyhurst scored the game-winning goal for Denver with a great effort and threatened a few other times as well.
Notre Dame 0 x 4 UMass
Regional Final: Notre Dame passed Clarkson to get here while UMass side-swiped Harvard.
While the Buckeyes were cold, the Irish were hot, fresh off a Big Ten title win, and earning a great win in the tournament-opening match against Clarkson. UMass were hot, too, icing college hockey’s pre-eminent professional prospect in Cale Makar alongside a sneaky-good surrounding cast. It was one of the only times I caught Makar and I came out thoroughly impressed. His reads and skating ability combine in a player who has excellent general intuitions about where to go and what to do when he gets there. He can pinch up with poise in situations where most skaters would hesitate, knowing he can close the distance with grace and arrive positioned to make the play. Offensively, he’s a threat to shoot or create, and rarely telegraphs his intentions either way. With the puck he can escape and carry or break the puck out just as easily as he does anything else.
The Irish, while built and well-coached, didn’t have the same offensive capacity UMass showed. The first goal for the Minutemen came in the 2nd period, on the powerplay, with a puck that took a strange path into the zone and seemingly caught Cale Morris unprepared for the shot. The Irish would go on the powerplay just after and failed to create much, actually surrendering a top-quality chance instead. This gave Greg Carvel’s upstart Minutemen team a lot of momentum: seconds later, local sharpshooter John Leonard would capitalize to double their lead.
Notre Dame, needing their momentum the most in the second half of the second period, would be called for a penalty soon after and face sustained pressure instead. Cale Makar’s bomb teed up at the left point would see the Irish go down 3-0 with twenty-five minutes left in the game. Anyone familiar with the Irish this season would write them off here and rightfully so — this team lacks the offensive explosiveness to pull out four goals in half an hour: they would go on to score none. On the other side, the Minutemen were 22-0-0 leading after two. Shots after two periods were heavily tilted, 28 for the Minutemen, just 8 for the Irish. The game seemed like a repeat of the same thing over and over: Notre Dame attempting to get something going, UMass responding with the equivalent of a shrug, brushing them off, and then actually getting something going themselves. Over the course of three periods it added up to a 4-0 result for UMass, an empty-netter with 2:30 to spare sealing it all off.
All in all, 2019 was a tough out for the two Big Ten teams to make the tournament, after a great run in 2018. Ohio State bumped into a great #2-seed in Denver, afflicted by terrible NCAA tournament scheduling and an underwhelming end to their regular season, while Notre Dame faced a UMass team with a ton to prove who matched up against them very well. Cale Makar and the rest of the Minutemen’s electric offense sparked through a typically stingy Notre Dame defense, and that was all she wrote for Big Ten hockey this season.