A split series against Indiana (8-5-1) left Ohio coach Dan Morris with a lot to work on this week in practice, looking for improvement from the No. 3 team in the American Collegiate Hockey Association.
Improvement will have to come sooner rather than later for the Bobcats, as No. 7 Illinois travels to Bird Arena this weekend for two divisional games this weekend. But before Ohio could focus on the Illini, it needed to fix key mistakes that ailed the team the weekend before.
The Bobcats twice took large leads on both Friday (3-1 entering the third period) and Saturday (4-2 in the first period) against Indiana, but they let the Hoosiers storm back in each contest.
Indiana scored two goals in the third period of the first game, pushing a 3-3 game into overtime and an eventual shootout, when the Bobcats eventually fell two shots to one. Saturday, Ohio overcame a barrage of Hoosier goals and held on to win 7-6.
The six goals Ohio allowed against Indiana were the most allowed this season, with a 5-0 loss at Illinois the weekend before serving as the only games in which the Bobcats have allowed more than four goals.
But a split doesn’t cut it for Morris, who wants to see an improvement in his team’s spacing on the ice.
“Our offensive stuff is there, but we’re also working on transitioning from our offensive set, from the offensive zone, through the neutral zone and into the defensive zone,” Morris said. “We were making mistakes all the way through, so we’re going back over our structure just to kind of remind guys of what they need to do through the transition defense.”
Morris’ players agree with their coach and feel adjustments have to be made to the defense.
“This week we’ve been more focused on refining our system,” junior defenseman Duncan Green said. “We just need to work more on where we should be.”
The changes won’t extend to the net, despite Ohio’s goalkeeping combo allowing nine regulation goals and two shootout goals. Morris said that most of the goals allowed by goalies Fedor Dushkin and Michael Reed were more the result of broken defensive plays rather than poor play in net.
There has been no question of the success of the Bobcats on offense, as the 10 goals scored in the two games were the most Ohio has scored in a series since scoring 14 goals on John Carroll in September.
After splitting each of their past three series, including a split at “The Big Pond” in Illinois, the Bobcats are eager to take on the Fighting Illini at the smaller rink of Bird Arena.
“Illinois is a good team and playing in their rink, it’s pretty hard to win two games,” Green said. “Here, on our rink, we should have a better time of just playing our game on a small rink and hopefully come away with two wins.”
ch203310@ohiou.edu
