The puck left the stick of Central Oklahoma forward Josh Wyatt at his team’s blue line. It wobbled down the ice, unharmed, until it slid into an empty net and sealed Ohio’s fate.
Ninety-four seconds later, the Bobcats’ season ended. They came up short in the finals of the American Collegiate Hockey Association National Tournament, losing 3-0 to Central Oklahoma, to cap an impressive season in a dispirited way.
“It’s pretty painful,” senior captain Matt Hartman said. “But we made a great run these past two weeks. It was something really special to be a part of.”
Hartman wasn’t speaking in hyperbole. The Bobcats had a special year.
Their regular season was spectacular, but it pretty much always is. It was Ohio’s 15th-straight season with 25-plus wins.
The run through the 16-team, single-elimination ACHA Tournament is what made this season different. Ohio’s appearance in the national championship game was its first since 2004.
“I was really proud of this group, for sure,” coach Sean Hogan said.
Senior leaders
The foundation of Ohio’s success this season was its group of 10 seniors, an abnormally high number on a roster of 28 players.
All season long, Hogan praised the leadership of his veterans. During the national tournament, when emotional composure and mental stamina are most crucial, having so many seniors is an advantage.
“Player-led teams this time of year are the ones that have the most success,” Hogan said after Ohio’s semifinal win Monday. “It’s not so much the voice at the top, the head coach.”
There’s a certain steadiness that comes with being a senior and being around the same program for four or five years.
Ohio’s seniors can be credited for why the Bobcats didn’t lose more than two-straight games all season and why they won three games in a row to make the national championship.
Four of the team’s top five scorers in the national tournament were seniors, and the seniors as a whole scored 11 of the team’s 20 goals. That’s no fluke.
“Everything we do going forward is built on what they did,” Hogan said. “So it’s almost like standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Freshmen impress
As old of a team as Ohio was this season, it was somehow young at the same time.
In preparation for the mass exodus of seniors, Hogan brought in a class of eight freshmen. Most of the new players contributed significantly, including four — Gianni Evangelisti, Jake Houston, Austin Heakins and Tyler Harkins — who finished in Ohio’s top 11 regular season scorers.
Of the bunch, Evangelisti, a forward, Houston, a defenseman and Jimmy Thomas, a goalie, had the biggest impacts.
Evangelisti, who spent the majority of the year as the third-line center, would’ve likely finished as the Bobcats’ leading scorer had he not missed a couple games with a knee injury late in the season. He finished with 32 points, good for third on the team, in 28 games.
Houston finished the year as the quarterback of his power play unit and one half of the team’s top defensive line. His speed, stickhandling skills and vision on the ice will serve him and his team well for years to come. He had 28 points in 33 games this season.
Thomas entered the season as a newcomer behind two seniors, Aaron Alkema and Ryan Heltion, who’d been mainstays in the Ohio net the previous three seasons. By the end of this season, however, Hogan tapped Thomas as the starter for the national tournament.
“It’s always a hard call to go with a young guy over an older guy,” Hogan said. “But Jimmy obviously took us to the national final.”
Ohio playing deep into the season was a benefit to all the freshmen, even the ones who were scratched most of the year.
“I’m just hoping the freshmen, the younger guys aren’t satisfied with this,” senior forward Liam Geither said. “And they can come back next year stronger than ever. And they can come back and win it.”
If not next year, perhaps in three years, when the current freshmen are the next large senior class, the national championship experience early in their careers will pay off.
