Coach Sean Hogan rolled his eyes as he walked off the ice. He was disappointed in his team’s performance. He even made the comment that his team might have left for Christmas early.
There were a lot of problems on the Bird Arena ice Friday. One of them happened to be the power play, which has been a recurring problem for Ohio for what seems like forever.
Ohio was 0-3 with the man-advantage in its 4-0 loss to Illinois.
The Bobcats are known as a team that possesses the puck. They cycle the puck, get shots on net and often score off net-front screens.
Some of those opportunities were there in the loss, but when Ohio looked for something off the rebound, it wasn’t there. Jake Barnhart, Illinois’ goalie, was stopping the puck in its tracks all night.
“That goalie made some good saves tonight, man” Hogan said.
Friday night’s performance was in stark contrast to last Saturday’s strong outing with the man-advantage. The Bobcats won that game 4-0, scoring all their goals on the power play.
There have been ups and downs in the power play units success this season. It’ll have games like last week, when it scores four goals. There’s also games like this, or like the Nov. 10 overtime loss to Liberty, when the power play unit went 0-5.
Ohio’s power play always looks good in practice. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t translate into games.
“You get used to playing against the same guys,” Cody Black said. “So, it’s something different in a game.”
Throughout the game, Ohio looked as if it was feeling out Illinois. As the time began to run out, so did the Bobcats’ chances. They didn’t do themselves any favors, as they only drew four penalties, one of those coming at the same time as a Scott Bagby slashing penalty. One way for Ohio to have more success on the power play is to have more chances.
“We all preach (the small things),” Black said. “We know what to do… It’s knowing to adjust and playing your game. It goes back to that simplification thing.”
The unit is scoring on 28.21 percent of its chances. That’s good for second in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League. That’s also over 14 percent worse than No. 1 — both in power play and standings — Lindenwood. And when Ohio doesn’t succeed on the power play all night against a CSCHL team, like Illinois, home shutouts happen.
Those shutouts don’t happen often in Bird for the Bobcats. It’s happened once this season, a 3-0 loss to Lindenwood. But before that, it was the first home shutout since November of 2016.
That opponent was Illinois.
With a poor performance Friday, highlighted by the failures of the power play, Ohio has to come back strong on Saturday.
Hogan told the team after the game that life is about how you respond. The team seems ready to respond to it being shut out by the Fighting Illini.
“We’ll be ready for tomorrow,” Black said.
