After a long weekend on the road, Ohio will have to take a page from Meatloaf’s playbook and say, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
The Bobcats won two of their three games at the 9th Annual Division 1 Showcase over the weekend, beating fellow top-20 teams Stony Brook and Oklahoma before falling to Delaware in Sunday’s finale.
The Bobcats (5-1-0) began their weekend by easing to a 5-0 victory over Stony Brook. After 15 minutes of scoreless hockey, Michael Schultz and Tyler Pilmore opened the scoring only 15 seconds apart late in the first.
In the end, the two quick strikes would be all that was required for Teddy Dushkin, as the sophomore netminder stopped all 33 shots the Seawolves threw at the net to earn his first shutout in a Bobcat uniform.
“Teddy played great,” coach Dan Morris said. “He definitely earned his shutout. He made some big saves early. You saw what he could do in a two-game set against Stony Brook and Oklahoma.”
Next on the docket were the eighth-ranked Sooners, coming off an impressive 4-3 victory of their own Friday night in an upset of defending national champion Davenport. Oklahoma carried that momentum forward early, taking a 2-1 lead into the first intermission and outshooting the Bobcats 50-37 during a game riddled with penalties.
But Dushkin kept his head and once again came up huge, shutting down the Sooners during the final 40 minutes. Schultz scored the game-winning goal midway through the second and added another in the third to salt away a 4-2 win.
The Bobcats then ran out of gas against sixth-ranked Delaware. Ohio scored first through Jared Fuhs to lead early but hit a wall as the Blue Hens scored the final six goals to hand the Bobcats their first loss of the season.
“I think fatigue for us was a factor for us. We came out of the gates pretty good but things got away from us,” Morris said. “We gave up a lot of breakaways, a lot of odd man rushes. And Delaware played really well.”
Even with the one-sided loss, Morris said the most important thing his team would get out of the weekend was not wins or losses but the experience of playing top-notch competition on neutral ice, which is a great primer for the ACHA national tournament in March.
“We had four freshman play defense out of our six,” he said. “We learned a lot about them and a lot about Teddy. Overall, it’s just invaluable experience.”
cd211209@ohiou.edu
