Amid all the sounds of clanging sticks and banging boards, Matt Rudin knows where Tyler Harkins is, while Gianni Evangelisti knows where Jake Houston is.
There’s a lot going on the ice during a game at Bird Arena, or any other arena in the American Collegiate Hockey Association, like Liberty’s LaHaye Ice Center, or Illinois “The Big Pond.” There’s the fans screaming, skates gliding, sticks and bodies colliding against the boards.
It may seem that it could be hard to hear on the ice with all that is going on. For the players, however, it has all become kind of a white noise.
“You can’t really hear the crowd that much when you’re playing,” Houston said. “It kind of gets drowned out.”
With the crowd being drowned out, skaters yell to communicate with each other.
There’s a lingo involved. It’s one that comes from playing together over time. It’s something that’s understood throughout hockey. From one team to another, things can carry over.
Like maybe some lingo and chemistry moving from a team in Cleveland to the one in Athens. The chemistry between Rudin and Harkins was built when the two played together on the Cleveland Barons, a youth hockey club.
“Harkins and I played together growing up, so we know where each other are,” Rudin said. “Where our stronger areas are on the ice. That has a crucial element.”
Their relationship proved itself to be strong at the beginning of the season, when the two of them shared a line with Cody Black. That line produced many points at the beginning of the season, when the Bobcats scored double-digit goals in their first four games for the first time since the 1988-89 season.
Harkins and Rudin are just one example. The knowledge for skaters of their teammates’ position on the ice comes with time. It takes players playing with each other.
If a player stays in one spot on the ice, it might mess up the flow of the offense. So, knowing where everyone is going to skate to on the ice is a plus. When Ohio’s offense is clicking, skaters can find each other in space.
“It’s a matter of trying to get open, not being stationary out there,” said Evangelisti, Ohio’s leading point scorer this season. “Always be looking for the open areas.”
Because when skaters find space in the open areas, that’s when the Bobcats can show their skills.
“I take pride in my passing,” Rudin said. “I’m really good at being able to decipher if I can make a pass or not, seeing my surroundings, knowing where people are.”
And when his team is moving around and getting open, Rudin knows not just where Harkins wants the puck, but where most of his teammates want the puck. Rudin has picked up seven assists to go with his seven goals this season.
Coach Sean Hogan mixes up the lines from time to time, but defensive pairings tend to stay the same.
Seniors Grant Hazel and Tom Pokorney do their best to keep themselves in sync to help goalie Jimmy Thomas protect the net. Houston and his defensive partner, Nick Grose, don’t even need to look for each other on the ice any more. They know where each other will be, so they can find the other with the puck.
“Me and (Grose) after playing together all semester, we almost don’t even talk as much because we know where each other is going to be,” Houston said. “That’s sometimes good, sometimes bad.”
And the communication between teams tends to stay between teams. Hogan often says hockey is a game where when you focus on yourself and the team, good things will happen. So, teams don’t often try and mess with each other’s communication.
“If you take care of business inside your own team, usually good things happen,” Pokorney said. “As Hogan says all the time.”
With all the different ways of communication, verbal or nonverbal, good chemistry within in the team has Ohio sitting at No. 4 in the ACHA standings, and second in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League, behind the top-ranked team in the nation, Lindenwood.
It boils down to a simple equation: good chemistry leads to good play, which leads to fun, which is important in the long grind that is the ACHA season.
“Whenever you’re having fun is when you’re playing your best,” Houston said.
