The Ohio State men's hockey team shows off their new uniforms. (OhioStateBuckeyes.com Photo)
The Ohio State men’s hockey team takes to the ice this weekend for a pair of games to start the regular season against the Quinnipiac Bobcats, Friday and Saturday night. The puck drops at 7:05 p.m. at Value City Arena both evenings. Friday’s game can be heard on WBNS-AM 1460 and Saturday’s will be stream live on the internet at OhioStateSports.net.
Head coach Mark Osiecki enters his second year at the helm of the Buckeyes after going 15-18-4 overall and 10-14-4-2 in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), good for ninth place in the 11-team league, last season.
Osiecki will benefit with the return of 15 letterwinners from a season ago, including nine forwards, four defensemen and two goalies. But this is a young team as Osiecki rebuilds the program. There are 13 new faces on the roster that includes 12 freshmen plus Minnesota-Duluth transfer, junior goalie Brady Hjelle, who spent the 2010-2011 season with the Cedar Rapid Roughriders, a Tier 1 junior ice hockey team in the United States Hockey League (USHL).
The top returning scorer is senior forward Danny Dries, who netted 15 goals with 12 assists last season. Dries, who hails from Lake Orion, Mich., was third on the Buckeye roster with 27 points. He was also third on the team with 128 shots on goal, led the team with a .117 shooting percentage and was tied for the team lead with 64 penalty minutes.
Also back is sophomore forward Alex Szczechura from Brantford, Ont., who scored seven goals with seven assists in 2010-11. He was tied for fifth in goals and was sixth in points last season for Ohio State.
The Buckeyes’ top returning defenseman is Curtis Gedig, a sophomore from West Kelowna, B.C., who had 12 assists and was a +2 last year.
Senior netminder Cal Heeter from St. Louis, Mo., returns after starting all 37 games last season. Voted team MVP as a junior, Heeter had a 2.30 goals against average and a .923 save percentage. He was a three-time CCHA Goalie of the Week and a national player of the week honoree. Heeter is fourth in program history in both save percentage (.913) and goals-against average (2.64) and he’s tied for fifth in shutouts (3).
Backing him up is Hjelle, who played 53 regular-season games for Cedar Rapids and set a league record with 40 wins, along with a 2.21 goals against average and .923 save percentage while posting five shutouts during the 2010-11 season.
In Ohio State’s lone exhibition game of the season last Saturday, a 6-5 win over the University of Windsor at the Chiller North ice facility, sophomore forward Chris Crane had two goals and two assists, freshman Ryan Dzingel added three assists, Dries and freshman Riley Simpson each had a goal and a helper for two points.
Between the pipes, Heeter gave up one goal with eight saves in 30:54 of ice time, while Hjelle surrender four goals on 15 shots in 28:59.
In all, 11 freshmen skated in the game for Ohio State. The Buckeyes were 2-of-6 on the power play while killing three out of the four when the Lancers had a man adavantage.
After hosting Quinnipiac for a two-game set, Ohio State hits the road for two consecutive weekends taking on Notre Dame and Michigan State to start CCHA play before returning home to Value City Arena to take on Alaska, Oct. 27-28.
