While Hate Miami Week races toward its climax tomorrow, another rivalry lurks in Bird Arena.
Ohio's No. 1 rival on the ice, Penn State, comes to Athens ranked second in the American Collegiate Hockey Association.
I personally hate Penn State
Bobcats leading scorer Jim Fuhs said. I'm pretty sure every guy in our locker room hates them and I'm pretty sure they hate us.
Penn State's success last series came by trying to force Ohio into making mistakes. The teams accounted for 95 penalty minutes in the series.
Fuhs admits that the Icers get on the Bobcats' nerves at times, but that they can't let it bother them.
They're good at frustrating teams he said. That's the stuff we need to learn to play through so that we can get them frustrated and go on the power play.
That doesn't mean Ohio (16-9-0) plans on being less physical, however. Captain Jim Roach said that Ohio depends more on physicality while Penn State (21-1-3) relies strictly on skill.
(The Icers) totally hate being physical. They aren't that kind of team
Roach said. If we come out physical and kind of put them in their place a little bit
we tend to do a little better.
The Bobcats, ranked eighth in the ACHA, are trying to stop their season-long trend of splitting series. In 12 series this season, they have swept four, been swept once and split the rest. They split only four series all of last season en route to a 30-12 record.
One of those splits was against the Icers, as Ohio won the Friday matchup 4-3 in a shootout, but was shut out in the rematch, 3-0.
Along with being physical, Ohio is going to need to do a better job on special teams than they did the last time the teams met, as it failed to score a goal on 14 power play attempts while surrendering two shorthanded goals.
Special teams is more important in these games than any other factor
coach Dan Morris said. That's an area that we need to concentrate on
so we can make some adjustments.
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